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The linguistic term, past participle, was coined circa 1798 [6] based on its participial form, whose morphology equates to the regular form of preterite verbs. The term, present participle, was first used circa 1864 [7] to facilitate grammatical distinctions. Despite the taxonomical use of "past" and "present" as associated with the ...
ii) participial phrases, composed by the participle and a quasi-subject noun phrase; such structures form a full new predicate, additional to the verbal predicate: a so-called absolute construction. It is so called because case marking of the whole construction stands "loosened, separated, free" from the verbal (or other) argumentation
A participle phrase is intended to modify a particular noun or pronoun, but in a dangling participle, it is instead erroneously attached to a different noun or to nothing; whereas in an absolute clause, is not intended to modify any noun at all, and thus modifying nothing is the intended use. An example of an absolute construction is:
An example is land in the phrase land mines given above. Examples of the above types of modifiers, in English, are given below. It was [a nice house]. (adjective modifying a noun, in a noun phrase) [The swiftly flowing waters] carried it away. (adjectival phrase, in this case a participial phrase, modifying a noun in a noun phrase)
The main uses of this participle, or of participial phrases introduced by it, are as follows. (Uses of gerunds and verbal nouns, which take the same -ing form, appear in sections below.) In progressive and perfect progressive constructions, as described in the relevant sections above:
The base form or plain form of an English verb is not marked by any inflectional ending.. Certain derivational suffixes are frequently used to form verbs, such as -en (sharpen), -ate (formulate), -fy (electrify), and -ise/ize (realise/realize), but verbs with those suffixes are nonetheless considered to be base-form verbs.
a complement or postmodifier [5] may be a prepositional phrase (... of London), a relative clause (like ... which we saw yesterday), certain adjective or participial phrases (... sitting on the beach), or a dependent clause or infinitive phrase appropriate to the noun (like ... that the world is round after a noun such as fact or statement, or ...
Verb phrases generally are divided among two types: finite, of which the head of the phrase is a finite verb; and nonfinite, where the head is a nonfinite verb, such as an infinitive, participle or gerund. Phrase structure grammars acknowledge both types, but dependency grammars treat the subject as just another verbal dependent, and they do ...