Thread: Use of gerund

Does anybody know why it is wrong to use the gerund in certain sentences in Spanish like for example: "robó escapando en un auto"?

Hi Gabriel! That's a very good question. That sentence is wrong because the use of the gerund in spanish is somehow different from the use in english. In Spanish we can only use it when the two actions are taking place at the exact same moment. For instance, in your example, what you would be saying is that the robbery and the scape happened at the same time, when actually the robbery was first.
I hope it helps!!!

So you are saying that the sentence in English would be "he commited a robbery, escaping in a car"? That doesn't sound like something we would say. Do you have another example? I know your issue is valid, I was just wondering about a better example.

Originally Posted by Gabriel

Does anybody know why it is wrong to use the gerund in certain sentences in Spanish like for example: "robó escapando en un auto"?

The issue in this example is that there are two actions which take place in this order: 1) committing robbery; 2) escaping. In Spanish, the gerund cannot be used to refer to an action which occurred after the main verb (a gerund may only refer to an action which occurred before or together with the main verb). Here, the main verb is "robar" and there is another action ("escapar") which takes place afterwards. A correct version in Spanish could be: "robó y se escapó en un auto". In this case, we are clearly describing the order in which things happened.

I hope you find it useful! I'd be glad to clarify more issues if you send more examples! Of course, the answer depends on the context, since there are several cases where the gerund is incorrectly used in Spanish.

Hi Gabriel:
Another wrong use of the gerund in Spanish is using it with adjectival function. For example: "Escribió una carta pidiendo recomendaciones". The right usage would be "Escribió una carta en la que pedía recomendaciones".
Hope it helps