Grammar for Everyone - Barbara Dykes 2007
17 Participles - Present participles
Introduction
Part II The parts of speech
Definition: The word ’participle’ comes to us via French, via Latin, from Greek, and means ’part-taking’. In grammar a participle is a part taken from a complete, or finite, verb form for another purpose.
Before studying participles, students should understand:
• the meaning of tense, which shows the time that an action takes place, in the past, present or future
• the meaning and use of auxiliary verbs to complete tenses
• the meaning of the terms ’finite’ and ’non-finite’
Knowledge of participles is extremely important as they help to form many of our tenses. While the present participle is easy to recognise, the past participle can be tricky, as it is often confused with the past tense. It can, therefore, be helpful to use charts to distinguish those forms that cause most errors, both in speech and in writing. Common errors occur with such verbs as ring - past tense rang, past participle rung. So mistakes need to be corrected at the earliest stage, before wrong habits set in. Participles occur in our earliest conversation.
Participles are very flexible as they can become various parts of speech according to the work they do. They can also be added to an auxiliary (helper) verb in order to form a complete tense. Participles are of two kinds.
Present participles
The present participle is formed by adding -ing to the base verb form.
For example:
eat + ing = eating
Using auxiliary verbs, we form finite continuous tenses:
They were eating - past
They are eating - present
They will be eating - future
Remember - the ’ing’ form on its own is known as the present participle, the tense being indicated by the auxiliary. So continuous tenses always have at least two parts.