Identify this grammar structure:

Question

In this sentence: I watched her mow the grass, What is the grammar structure "mow the grass"? Participles are -ing or past tense forms: I watched her mowing the grass.

Another example: Ethan closed his eyes, feeling the wind sweep through his hair. The underlined part of the sentence is a participle modifying Ethan. But what is the clause wind sweep through his hair? Is it grammatically incorrect and should be sweeping through his hair?

Answer 1

For your first question, "watched" is the active verb in that sentence. Since the grammar structure would have been easier to identify if the subject and predicate were set up as such, "I watched her as she was mowing the grass," then I state that the phrase "mow the grass" would part of a subordinating clause because "as" is a subordinating conjunction. Regardless, the phrase "mow the grass" is acting as an adjectival in this sentence because it is further describing which girl is being watched. Who is being watched? The girl who is mowing the grass.

For your second question, the author could have written "sweeping through his hair," and it still would have been grammatically correct. However, the initial sentence, "Ethan closed his eyes, feeling the wind sweep through his hair," lets us know that this is a memory that the narrator is having of Ethan (could be a first-person narrator or a 3rd person narrator), so the phrase "sweep through his hair" is appropriate.

For your second question, "feeling the wind sweep through his hair," is a participial phrase. The comma before "feeling" is unnecessary. Whenever any dependent clause appears at the end of a sentence, a comma is not necessary to precede that dependent clause.