LAST week we took up the perfect infinitive as a grammatical form that, in tandem with the main verb of a sentence, either refers to things that might have happened in the past, as in “The board seems to have lost confidence in you,” or to an action that will be completed at some point in the future, as in “The company hopes with great expectations to have finished its restructuring by April.” This time we will take up in greater detail the form and uses of the perfect gerund.

Recall that a gerund is a verb form with “-ing” affixed to it to make it function as a noun, as in the sentence “The therapist suggested jogging as a simple antidote to lethargy.” Here, “jogging” is a gerund that serves as the direct object of the verb “suggested.” It has no tense and does not in itself indicate the time when its action takes place.

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