Frontmatter -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Part I: Preliminaries -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The gerund -- 3. Corpus data -- Part II: A multifunctional perspective -- Introduction -- 4. Reference -- 5. Aspect -- 6. The indefinite nominal gerund -- Part III: A variationist perspective -- Introduction -- 7. Token-level gerund constructions -- 8. Gradience and variation in the gerund system -- Part IV: Conclusions -- 9. Conclusion -- Appendix -- References -- Index