A participle is a verb form that functions as an adjective and can be written in the present or past tense. Present participles end in “-ing” and past participles end in various suffixes. They can also be used in participle sentences to modify nouns or pronouns. To avoid dangling modifiers, the participle should be placed close to the noun or pronoun it modifies.
In grammar, a participle is a verb or verb form that serves as an adjective. It can be classified as a verb or verbal form because it expresses an action or a present state. While the participle is based on a verb, it functions as an adjective because it modifies a noun or pronoun in a sentence. It can be written or expressed in the present or in the past. A participle can also be written as part of the sentence known as a participle sentence.
A present participle is a word ending in “-ing”. Sentences in this case often incorporate the auxiliary verb “to be” to indicate the current action. Some examples include “I’m walking on the boardwalk” or “He’s sleeping.” Occasionally, a present form ending in “ing” takes the role of an adjective to describe or modify a noun or pronoun in a sentence. Examples of this instance might include “The dog’s barking disturbed the neighbors” or “The winning team played a great game.”
Conversely, a past participle is a word ending in “-ed”, “-en” or “-ne”, as well as “-d”, “-n” or “-t”. Sentences including the past tense of the verb indicate a past or completed action. Some sentences written in the past tense may include “I studied Spanish” or “She fixed the broken chair arm.” Other examples include “The company mailed the check” or “She had already gone to the store”.
The statement can also be written in sentence form. A participle sentence consists of the present or past tense form of the verb, plus any modifiers, complements, as well as objects and direct objects of the state of being or action expressed in the participle. For example, in the sentence “Lynn noticed the deer wandering through the park,” the participle phrase “wandered through the park” serves as an adjective modifying deer. In another sentence, “Having eaten all his vegetables, he prepared for dessert”, the sentence “having eaten all his vegetables” functions as an adjective modifying the pronoun “he”.
In a sentence, the participle and participle phrase should be written as close to the noun or pronoun as possible for clarity and to avoid a dangling modifier. A sentence with such an error omits the noun or pronoun, thus leaving the modifier suspended or “pending”. The noun or pronoun must be clearly identified as the subject of the main clause in the sentence so that the participle can easily refer to it. In the sentence, “Running across the field, he tripped over a large rock,” the main sentence states that the person – he – committed the action mentioned in the modifying sentence – Running across the field.
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