subject complement / gerund

[nemesisgrw]

What are the rules for the usage of articles with the linguistic terms such as "subject complement" or "gerund"?

When I talk about the term generally, do I use THE or zero article?
I am quite sure that when I mean "any" of them, I can use a/an.

Any ideas? Thanks.

 

[velisarius]

Welcome to the forum, nemesisgrw!

Can you provide a sentence where you would use the terms, to illustrate what you mean? Then we can comment on whether you have used the article correctly. I'd be less likely to use zero article, but it depends on context.

 

[nemesisgrw]

1) The first term I would like to discuss is X/the gerund.
2) X/The gerund is a verb form etc..

3) X/The subject complement describes the subject.
4) The distribution of X/the subject complement in the text was..

Thank you

 

[Cagey]

Thank you for providing examples.
They each raise slightly different issues.

1) The first term I would like to discuss is X/the gerund.

If I were defining gerund as a term, I would say:
​

The first term I would like to discuss is 'gerund'.
​

If I am going to talk about how a gerund functions, for instance, I would say:
​

First, I would like to discuss the gerund.
​

2) The gerund is a verb form etc..

3) The subject complement describes the subject.

4) The distribution of subject complements in the text was..

When we talk about distribution, we use aplural. There are multiple subject complements, and the 'distribution' describes where they are.
​