Hiking is a pleasant activity. how does the underlined gerund function in the sentence?
a. as a direct object
b. as an indirect object
c. as an appositive
d. as a subject

The answer is letter D. as a subject.

Explanation:

Gerunds are words formed by adding -ing to verbs. Even though they look like verbs, they behave like nouns, having the same functions nouns have in a sentence. A gerund can, for example, function as the subject of a sentence.

The subject of a sentence is what the sentence is about, the topic of the sentence.

Taking the information above into consideration, and also the fact that the only gerund in the sentence "Hiking is a pleasant activity" is the word "hiking", we can safely say that the gerund functions as a subject.

Hiking is what the sentence is about. Everything that comes after it has the purpose of giving us information about hiking. We get to know that hiking is an activity. We get to know not only that it is activity, but also that it is a pleasant one. We could dissect the sentence in the following way:

- Hiking --> subject

- is --> third-person singular liking verb

- a pleasant activity --> subject complement

go to crash course lititure and go to seconed page and it shows a video about that

- "is not only a luminous passive watcher in the night sky, but it is a powerful force.

it does symbolizes love,   lust   and dreaming and is seen as a power symbolic force that determines and affects human behaviors and reactions.

in the context of the question it does remain you that he events are only taking place at night and the reader of the passage of time."