The nature of -ing nominals has been a widely debated topic since the early days of generative grammar. These nominals are standardly divided into those that are more verbal (identified inter alia by the possibility of an accusative external argument and direct internal argument to the -ing form) and those that are more nominal (which can take an article and whose theme participant is introduced by of, rather than directly). In this paper, new data are presented based on extensive corpus work involving the the+VPing construction, as in the knowing the answer, which calls into question this simple classification and points to the independence of the internal structure of the -ing nominal and the possibility of bearing a determiner. The paper further argues that the data provide evidence for an event-type layer within VP, parallel to the kind-describing nominal layer within a layered approach to DP (Zamparelli 1995).