What is a participle?

Question

What is a participle? How is it used in a sentence? How can I differentiate a participle from a regular verb?

Answer 1

Sometimes a verb is just a verb-or not!!

A participle is a term usually made by the addition of -ing, -d, or -ed to a verb.

So if you know your verbs you can easily figure out how to turn it into a participle.

Why use a participle????

Usually we use a participle to modify a noun or a pronoun.

They look like this: Screaming the lyrics of its new song, the rock group could hardly be heard above the crowd.

Find the noun or pronoun in the sentence: (group)

Look for the verb (scream)

Turn the verb into a participle: scream(ing) and you have a modifier of the (group)

And another thing:

A participle can be a present participle: dancing, laughing, cooking

Or it can be a past participle: danced, laughed, cooked

A present participle (ing ending) describes the action taking place in the "now," thus the present time.

A past participle (-ed) describes the action in the "past," something that has already happened.

But wait, there is another form of a participle: a perfect participle. A perfect participle is made by the

combination of "having" or "having been."

It looks like this: Having stayed out too late, the boys were grounded.

Answer 2

The best way to answer your question is to give you examples. Just below are two sentences which contain participles.

The first sentence's participle is "walking down the street." Notice that this section of the sentence cannot stand alone but needs the second part to have clarity and make sense.

Walking down the street, he suddenly came across his friend.

The second sentence's participle "walked down the street" also needs the second part of the sentence to be clear.

Walked down the street every day by its owner, the dog felt secure.

To sum it up, a participle works with another independent part of a sentence to make a complete meaning. In other words, the participle depends on the main part of the sentence to be clear. Sometimes a participle is called a dependent clause.

A participle is a "regular" verb but it connects with an independent verb and independent part of the sentence to achieve its clarity.

Practice writing some paritciples yourself in a sentence and it will become clearer to you.

Thank you.

Dr. Howard Sage