Dear Michael, “ trying to explain to dumb people like me just what you mean.” You are too kind to say something like that. ^_^ ----- Strictly speaking, I would say both sentences are not my cases. "It was the washing, the cleaning, the cooking and the shopping that really killed me in those early years." This is a cleft sentence, so you can totally drop “ it was….that….” The sentence still can work, and this is not a relative clause. ---- “The washing, the cleaning, the cooking and the shopping, which really killed me in those early years, soon faded into insignificance when the baby arrived.” Although this is a relative clause, but “washing, cleaning, cooking and shopping” are pure nouns not gerunds. This is not my case as well.

You're welcome. I hope I helped. I can see that it must be frustrating for you, trying to explain to dumb people like me just what you mean. For my part, it's a challenge and sometimes a pleasure to try to tease out exactly what your intended meaning is, and to try to work out how to respond in a way that satisfies you. Very often, it seems, the English that we can all read and hear is nothing like that prescribed in text books and, often, in lessons. Very often that's because what we read and hear includes bad English. Sometimes it's bad in a way that nobody cares about, and sometimes it's bad in a way that does cause problems. Sometimes, though, it's not really bad English at all. It's just that the process of preparing workable generalisations (unfortunately often presented, misleadingly, as rules - there's a lovely quote about exactly this in the OED or Merriam-Webster, though I can't locate it just now) often produces a false sense of security in learners about how English "should be written". I understand that, although I'd caution other people against taking that line. In your case, I've seen no evidence that you ever have. On strange quotations, the very first Pirates of the Caribbean movie had one which some people might feel sums up the mainstream English (and American) approach to grammar rules. It goes: 'And thirdly, the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.' Your questions are a lot more interesting that the main run of what we see on here - so thank you for that! One final thought on this: a list of gerunds (with or without a grouping noun at the end) might work. So: "It was the washing, the cleaning, the cooking and the shopping that really killed me in those early years." Does this work for you? Or would you prefer: “The washing, the cleaning, the cooking and the shopping, which really killed me in those early years, soon faded into insignificance when the baby arrived.”

I agree with you that "Prevented him from playing the oboe" and "Cost him dearly, preventing him from playing" might be much better. ---- Thank you for your time and detailed explanation on the question. ^_^

Yes, I know about the examples. It was very hard to find ones to fit your model. I couldn't find decent key words either. With your example, switching around the "playing the oboe" could make the sentence very clumsy. The flow of "cost him playing the oboe" is not at all elegant. If we dropped the "cost" for "stopped" or "prevented" we might do better. "Prevented him from playing the oboe" might work. "Cost him dearly, preventing him from playing" might be a little better. This switch also interferes with the writer's careful use of end focus in the original, which deliberately delays "playing the oboe" to the end to give it extra emphasis (in my opinion, of course).

"Do you have a special reason for wanting to do this?" Re: Because I read an article, which introduced a genius musician. " Those involuntary muscle contractions cost Klein, one of the world's foremost orchestral and solo musicians, the thing he loved and did best, playing the oboe. " Out of the blue, a question came to my mind : can we replace "the thing" with "playing the oboe" directly ? ---- Thank you for your endeavor to find examples. ^_^ I tried to find some but I didn't know what keywords I can type in. ---- "Having been attacked by bears at the zoo convinced me not to visit there any more" The sentence is ok but it's not the form of relative clauses.