Why there is a gerund?

In one single sentence, there is only one verb.
The man answered them, the woman remaining silent.
In this sentence, 'answered ' is the main verb. There cannot be another verb, so 'remained ' is changed to present participle ----> remaining

the man answered them, the woman remained silent ----> is wrong, because two sentences cannot be joined by comma (comma splice)

If you want to use two verbs, then you need a conjunction 'and'
----> The man answered them, and the woman remained silent.

leRo：
Remaining silent does not have the force of a noun and thus not a gerund.
Swimming is my favourite hobby.----Swimming is a gerund.
Tiger hunting had been a noble sport in India----Tiger hunting is a gerund.
' remaining silent' in this sentence is a participle which has the force of a verb and of an adjective, it is thus an adjective phrase to qualify the woman.

As to whether you can grammatically correct to rearrange the sentence to

' The man answered them, the woman remained silent.', The answer is
YES.but it needs to change the comma to a semicolon. Reasons therefor ：
1) ' The man answered them' is a simple sentence. It has its own subject
and predicate ：the same applies to ' the woman remained silent.'.
They are in true two clauses. We can surely connect these two simple
clauses by means of a Co-ordinating( or sometimes referred to as Co-
ordinative) Conjunction in this context like：
The man answered them, and the woman remained silent. or
As the man answered them, the woman remained silent. or
When the man answered them, the woman remained silent., so as to make
the sentence sounds more natural and acceptable to foreigners.
2) It is a simple grammar rule that ' Any of the Co-ordinating Conjunctions
such as and, but, or, nor also, either.....or, neither..... nor, etc., with the
exceptions of or, nor, may be omitted and its place taken by a comma,
semicolon, or colon depending on the requirement of the sentence .' as 'John went out to play; Mary stayed in to work.' and so is your sentence,
' The man answered them; the woman remained silent.'.
Before ending my answer, I would like to comment that one sentence
doesn't necessarily take one verb even in a simple sentence where there
is an auxiliary verb like " I have to take a book.",we have two verbs here, the main finite verb' to take' and the auxiliary verb' have', to say nothing that a compound sentence can have several verbs.

其實你重寫的句子是可以的，但要冒著一般人認為錯的危險，以下是蘋果日報，征服英語古德明先生的回答，可作參考：


問：《聖經．哥林多書》有 Love is patient, love is kind（愛是有耐心的，愛是親切的）一語。我認識的一位修女認為兩子句（ clause）之間沒有連接詞（ conjunction），不應用逗點，但《聖經》英文也有錯嗎？

答：兩個子句之間，假如沒有連接詞，通常應用分號（ semicolon），否則算是犯了 comma splice（逗點接合）的錯誤。不過，《聖經》那一句並沒有錯。短的子句假如用字、結構相似，可以只用逗點接連，不必加連接詞，例如： He is no longer the man I knew twenty years ago. Poverty has crushed his pride, disease has ruined his health（他不復是二十年前我認識的那個人了。貧窮已銷盡他的豪氣，疾病也已摧殘他的健康）。


這樣看來，英文真是一門非常深奧的學問，我們要多看，並要虛心，最好不要先被一般的概念所限死，因為英文確有很多的例外


希望幫到你！