Is "understanding" a verb here, or is it a noun?
There's no understanding her.
'understanding': is not a thing, it is not an object.
'understanding' is an activity.
For one, 'understanding' *is* a thing--it is the act of understanding. All activities/actions are things. They are similar to abstract nouns (nouns like 'love', 'thought', 'passion', etc) as opposed to concrete nouns like 'book', 'hand', 'street', although some actions can be quite concrete (like 'hitting')
Another thing that might be helpful is whether the -ing word can be the subject of a sentence:
Understanding is futile.
See? it's a noun. A verb cannot be the subject of a sentence...
There's a better noun to use here, which sounds more comfortable than using a gerund: 'Understanding is futile' - of course you already know, I'm just pointing it out so that learners of English are aware.
Understandance is futile
And here?
Understanding him, she ran like mad.
Here, 'Understanding' is a DIFFERENT word from the Gerund (it is based off the same root verb though). In the above, it is an adjective (present participle) functioning as an adverb (adverbial clause).
The convergence of all three (Old English -ing/-ung, Middle English ,and patronymic ending used for names ("Browning", "Ewing", "Channing", etc in Modern English as -ing make it difficult to distinguish when a word is functioning as one as opposed to another.
This last one also means "of a specified kind" or has diminuitive properties when added to words that are not personal names (eg. "shilling", "farthing", "whiting", "sweeting", "gelding", etc)
Verbs vs. nouns
The gerund-particle sometimes looks like a noun. This is especially true when it is used as a subject, as in the following example:
* Understanding is good for you.
There's no understanding her.
'understanding': is not a thing, it is not an object.
'understanding' is an activity.
For one, 'understanding' *is* a thing--it is the act of understanding. All activities/actions are things. They are similar to abstract nouns (nouns like 'love', 'thought', 'passion', etc) as opposed to concrete nouns like 'book', 'hand', 'street', although some actions can be quite concrete (like 'hitting')
Another thing that might be helpful is whether the -ing word can be the subject of a sentence:
Understanding is futile.
See? it's a noun. A verb cannot be the subject of a sentence...
There's a better noun to use here, which sounds more comfortable than using a gerund: 'Understanding is futile' - of course you already know, I'm just pointing it out so that learners of English are aware.
Understandance is futile
And here?
Understanding him, she ran like mad.
Here, 'Understanding' is a DIFFERENT word from the Gerund (it is based off the same root verb though). In the above, it is an adjective (present participle) functioning as an adverb (adverbial clause).
The convergence of all three (Old English -ing/-ung, Middle English ,and patronymic ending used for names ("Browning", "Ewing", "Channing", etc in Modern English as -ing make it difficult to distinguish when a word is functioning as one as opposed to another.
This last one also means "of a specified kind" or has diminuitive properties when added to words that are not personal names (eg. "shilling", "farthing", "whiting", "sweeting", "gelding", etc)
Verbs vs. nouns
The gerund-particle sometimes looks like a noun. This is especially true when it is used as a subject, as in the following example:
* Understanding is good for you.