Participles & Participial Phrases

Participles & Participial Phrases

Participles are words that look like verbs and act like adjectives.
You could say that they have identity issues.
Words that are made of verbs but don't act like verbs are called verbals. There are two other kinds of verbals: gerunds and infinitives.


A participle is a verbal that is used as an adjective and most often ends in -ing or -ed. The term verbal indicates that a participle, like the other two kinds of verbals, is based on a verb and therefore expresses action or a state of being. However, since they function as adjectives, participles modify nouns or pronouns. There are two types of participles: present participles and past participles. Present participles end in -ing. Past participles end in -ed, -en, -d, -t, or -n, as in the words asked, eaten, saved, dealt, and seen.

• The crying baby had a wet diaper.
• Shaken, he walked away from the wrecked car.
• The burning log fell off the fire.
• Smiling, she hugged the panting dog.

A participial phrase is a group of words consisting of a participle and the modifier(s) and/or (pro)noun(s) or noun phrase(s) that function as the direct object(s), indirect object(s), or complement(s) of the action or state expressed in the participle, such as:

Removing his coat, Jack rushed to the river.

 

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