There are two kinds of participles; [Footnote: Grammarians are not agreed as to what these words that have the nature of the verb and that of the noun should be called. Some would call the simple forms doing, writing, and injuring, in sentences (1), (6), and (7), Lesson 38, Infinitives. They would also call by the same name such compound forms as being accepted, having been shown, and having said in these expressions: "for the purpose of being accepted;" "is the having been shown over a place;" "I recollect his having said that." But does it not tax even credulity to believe that a simple Anglo-Saxon infinitive in -an, only one form of which followed a preposition, and that always to, could have developed into many compound forms, used in both voices, following almost any preposition, and modified by the and by nouns and pronouns in the possessive? No wonder the grammarian Mason says, "An infinitive in -ing, set down by some as a modification of the simple infinitive in -an or -en, is a perfectly unwarranted invention."
Others call these words modernized forms of the Anglo-Saxon Verbal Nouns in -ung, -ing. But this derivation of them encounters the stubborn fact that those verbal nouns never were compound, and never were or could be followed by objects. These words, on the contrary, are compound, as we have seen, and have objects. That they are from nouns in -ung is otherwise, and almost for the same reasons, as incredible as that they are from infinitives in -an.
Others call these words Gerunds. A gerund in Latin is a simple form of the verb in the active voice, never found in the nominative, and never in the accusative (objective) after a verb. A gerund in Anglo-Saxon is a simple form of the verb in the active voice—the dative case of the infinitive merely—used mainly to indicate purpose, and always preceded by the preposition to. To call these words in question gerunds is to stretch the term gerund immensely beyond its meaning in Anglo-Saxon, and make it cover words which sometimes (1) are highly compounded; sometimes (2) are used in the passive voice; sometimes (3) follow other prepositions than to; sometimes (4) do not follow any preposition; sometimes (5) are objects of verbs; sometimes (6) are subjects of verbs; sometimes (7) are modified by the; sometimes (8) are modified by a noun or pronoun in the possessive; and generally (9) do not indicate purpose. We submit that the extension of a class term so as to include words having these relations that the Anglo-Saxon gerund never had, is not warranted by any precedent except that furnished above in the extension of the term infinitive or of the term verbal noun!
Still others call some of these words Infinitives; some of them Verbal
Nouns; and some of them Gerunds.
The forms in question—seeing, having seen, being seen, having been seen, and having been seeing, for instance—are now made from the verb in precisely the same way when partaking the nature of the noun as when partaking the nature of the adjective. What can they possibly be but the forms that all grammarians call participles extended to new uses? If the uses of the original participles have been extended, why may we not carry over the name? The name participle is as true to its etymology when applied to the nounal use of the verb as when applied to the adjectival use. For convenience of classification we call these disputed forms participles, as good grammarians long ago called them and still call them, though some of them may be traced back to the Saxon verbal noun or to the infinitive, and though the Saxon participle was adjectival. The name participle neither confounds terms nor misleads the student. The nounal and the adjectival uses of participial forms we distinguish very sharply.] one sharing the nature of the verb and that of the adjective; the other, the nature of the verb and that of the noun. Participles commonly end in ing, ed, or en.
The participle, like other forms of the verb, may be followed by an object complement or an attribute complement.
Analysis and Parsing.
The +participle+ may be used as an +adjective modifier+.
1. Hearing a step, I turned.
I | turned
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\ |
\ hea
\ ring | step
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\a