As is well known, the verbs need, require, lack and want, on the one hand, and deserve, justify, merit, warrant..., on the other, can exceptionally take -ING complement clauses with ‘concealed’ passive interpretations whenever the verb of the –ING clause allows passivisation. Such ‘concealed passive’ gerunds (Huddleston & Pullum's terminology) can, in fact, even be followed by agentive by-phrases and/or adverbs, as in Your hair needs cutting by a professional, or This draft needs checking carefully by the editor, all of which seems coherent enough with the claim that they are, indeed, a) passive in meaning (although ‘active’ in form) and b) real verbs (rather than de-verbal ING-nouns), as the presence of carefully in the latter example shows.
Although such subordinate gerunds must allow passivisation and, therefore, be at least two-place, it is clear that they need not be ‘transitive’ in the strict sense of taking direct objects, because dyadic verbs taking prepositional, instead of direct object complements (e.g., look at x), can also receive passive interpretations after need, etc. (cf.The ignition needs looking at). The appropriate descriptive generalisation, then, seems to be that gerunds of ‘active’ (= non-stative) two-place verbs can receive passive interpretations when they complement verbs like need or deserve.
What is rather less clear is whether (and, if so, why) such gerunds must be two-place predicates, as, obviously, many 'active' verbs that allow passivisation are not dyadic, but polyadic (e.g., 'ditransitive'), and others are ‘complex transitive’, but still take bona fide direct objects. Verbs like appoint, call, compare, distinguish, give, make, offer, persuade, send, to name but a few, are either ‘complex transitive’ (cf. appoint x + Predicative, make x + Predicative, make x + do y) or straightforward three-place predicates (cf. x compares y to z, x distinguishes y from z, x gives z y/x gives y to z, x offers z y/x offers y to z, x persuades y to do z, x sends y to z/x sends z y, etc.)
I therefore recently asked in a very large English language forum whether the 'passive gerund' construction was possible with polyadic/multi-predicate gerunds like appointing, comparing, giving, making, offering, persuading, sending, etc. in cases like (1-10) or not and the unanimous answer of all the British and American speakers who replied was 'no', with the possible exception of example (7), which some - to their surprise - found more acceptable than the rest:
(1) John deserves appointing __ Professor (=to be/being appointed ...)
(2) Fauré deserves comparing __ to Prokofiev (= to be/being compared...)
(3) This present deserves giving __ to somebody you really like (= to be/being given...)
(4) Bill deserves giving __ this present (= to be/being given ...)
(5) The children need making __ work harder (= to be/being made to ...)
(6) Tom deserves offering __ tenure (= to be/being offered...)
(7) I need persuading __ to marry again (= to be/being persuaded...)
(8) I need persuading __ of the truth of such a claim (...to be/being persuaded...)
(9) She deserves sending __ an invitation (= to be/being sent...)
(10) She deserves sending __ to prison (= to be/being sent...)
[Of course, the reason why some speakers found example (7) more acceptable than the others probably is that, in (7), the clause to marry again need not be interpreted as the third argument of persuade; it can also be understood as an adjunct of 'purpose', and, if so, persuade remains a dyadic predicate.]
In sum, my guess is that dyadic active gerunds can be constructed as passive complements of need, deserve, etc., but higher-adicity ones cannot.
My question to this community, then, is why? Can anybody here point me to a principled explanation of this restriction?
Thank you in advance.