Hi. Welcome to www.engvid.com.
I'm Adam. In today's video we're going
to look at participles. Now, this is a little bit more advanced grammar,
but it's very useful and it's used in everyday speaking, but especially for writing and reading
because you're going to see participles everywhere. What participles do is they help you get sentence
variety, they help you make your sentences shorter, if necessary, they
give you a little bit of style. Okay? There are two participles that we need to look at,
they are called the active or passive participle. Sometimes you'll see them as
present or past participle. Past participles,
you're familiar with. Sometimes they're called the verb three, so: "eat",
past tense "ate", past participle is "eaten". Right? So that's the participle. Now, especially with the "ing" you have to be
careful because "ing" words, although they are verbs with "ing", they
can be pretty much anything. They could be a gerund, as you know, so they're
nouns; they could be part of the continuous verb, so "be going", so: "I am going", it's a
continuous action; but "ing" words can also be adjectives and adverbs. When they are adjectives and adverbs
they are actually participles. So it's very important to recognize
them and know how to use them. So what I want to do first is I want
to look at the adjective participles. Now, what you have to remember about
adjective participles, they are... They are reduced
adjective clauses. You know an adjective clause,
it's meant to modify a noun. It identifies it or gives extra
information about a noun. A participle, an adjective participle is that
adjective clause minus the subject and the verb. Okay? But we're going to
look at that in a second. So let's look at
this sentence first. Oh, sorry, let me... I made a little mistake here. "Dressed in his class-A uniform, the
marine looked like a recruitment poster." So this is the passive or the past participle
ending in "ed", it's a regular verb, so: "dressed". "Dressed in his
class-A uniform". Now, if I rearrange the
sentence, really, it says: "The marine, who was dressed in his class-A
uniform, looked like a recruitment poster." Okay? Like a poster that wants people
to join the marines, etc. But I can take that adjective clause, I get
rid of the "who was" or "who is", depending on the tense. Get rid of that, and I'm left
with a participle phrase. Now, I can take that participle phrase and
move it to the beginning of the sentence, just like I have here. The key when you're using
participles at the beginning... A participle phrase at the beginning of a
sentence, you must make sure that the subject, which is not there but it is understood:
who was, who is the marine, so the marine who was
dressed in his class-A, and then the subject of the independent
clause must be the same subject. Okay? We're going to look at a
couple more examples. "Standing near the window, Marie
could see the entire village." Look at the other example: "Standing near the
window, the entire village was in view." Now, many people will look
at both sentences and think: "Yeah, okay, I understand them.
They're both correct." This sentence is incorrect. Why? Because the subject
here is "the village". Can the village stand
near the window? No, it can't. So: "Standing near the
window" means Marie. "Marie, who was standing near the
window, could see the entire village." This subject cannot do this action, so you
have to make sure that the implied or the understood subject in the participle is the
exact same as the subject of the independent clause that follows it. Okay? That's very, very important. So now what we're going to do, I'm going to
look at a few more examples and I want to show you that you can start the sentence with
a participle phrase, but you can also leave it in the middle
of the sentence. Okay? Let's look at that. Okay, let's look at these examples now and you'll
see the different positions the participles can take. And again, we're talking about
participle phrases for the most part. "The jazz musician, known for his tendency to daydream,
got into a zone and played for an hour straight." Okay? So what we're doing here, we're giving you a
little bit more information about the musician. We're not identifying him. We're giving you extra information,
which is why we have the commas. Because if this was a... If this were a regular adjective clause, it
would be a non-identifying adjective clause and I would have... The tense is not important. It can be both. "He is known" or "He was known",
depending on the situation. "Who was known", but whenever I have the relative
pronoun of the adjective clause working also as the subject, and I have a "be" verb, I
can take them both out and leave only the participle and whatever
else comes with it. If we have a participle and it's only the
participle with nothing else after it, that becomes the adjective and it goes before
the noun, but I'll show you that after. So this basically is telling you something
about the musician, so it comes in the middle. Now, in this sentence: "The woman
talking to Jeff is his sister." The woman who is talking
to Jeff is his sister. Now I'm identifying the woman, so I don't
have a comma here because it's an identifying adjective clause and I take out the relative
pronoun subject, and again, the "be" verb. Now, don't get me wrong. You can make participles with other verbs
beside the "be" verb, but we're going to look at that another time. For now this is just the basic structure,
the basic way to make participles. And again, identifying
the woman. Remember, when we're... When we leave the participle inside a sentence
then it's going to come right after the noun it's modifying. So you don't have to worry too much
about making sure the subjects agree. When you put it at the beginning
make sure that the subjects agree, with the implied
subject, anyway. "The station chief was fired,
meaning there's an open position." Open position means, like,
a job you can apply for. Now, here, again: "which means". Basically, again, I have the relative
pronoun, that's also the subject. I have an active verb. I squeeze them both together
and I get a participle. The "which" refers to the
entire independent clause. Okay? So it doesn't have to be a "be"
verb, it can be other verbs, too. But, again, I'll show you construction in another
time because it's a little bit more tricky. You can't do it with
every adjective clause. You can't do it. But this "meaning" is about the entire independent
clause and it comes after the comma, because again, it's not an identifying adjective
clause and it ends the sentence. Now, before I mentioned that if
you don't have anything after... Right. So if I have, for example:
"The broken window". "The broken window was fixed." So imagine the window that was broken, "that"
out, "was" out, all I have is "broken". I don't have a whole phrase. So when I have only one-word participle, when
I only have the one word left over after the reduction, then I just treat it like a regular
adjective and I put it before the noun. Okay. And I can do it with
an "ing" as well. Okay. So far so good. Now we're going to look at adverbs where
it gets a little bit more confusing. Okay, so now we're going to look
at participles used as adverbs. So, again, it's very important to understand:
What's the difference between an adjective clause and an adverb clause? An adjective clause modifies a noun, it gives you
extra information about it or it identifies it. An adverb clause shows you a relationship between the
adverb clause itself and the independent clause. Same thing with the participle because an adverb
participle phrase is also a reduced clause, it's a reduced adverb clause, but it works
in the same way which sometimes can be a little bit confusing. So let's look at the examples. "Given the choice, most people would probably
choose good health over good fortune." So right now you can say: "Most people who
are given a choice would probably choose", you could say that. You could tell me about which people, or you
can show me the relationship about when they would make this choice. Now, this would give you
a hint: "would choose". It's a hypothetical. So, technically, this is: "If they were given the choice, most
people would probably choose..." So this is a conditional adverb clause reduced
to a conditional participle, adverb participle. So you have your conjunction, your subject, and
your verb all squeezed into the participle. But again, the
subject must agree. Okay? There must be
the same subject. Even if you don't see the subject here, even
though it's not a clause, there is no subject, it's a phrase, there
is an implied... An implied or a suggested subject in that
participle, and that's the key to remembering and to using participles. Here: "Realizing that the... The..." Sorry. "Realizing that the police were on to him,
Bernie quickly moved his millions off shore." Now, here is where you have
a little bit of a problem. This sentence, this participle could be
an adjective or it could be an adverb. When it's not entirely clear, most people will assume
or will think of this as an adjective participle. So, Bernie who realized that the police were on
to him, quickly moved his millions off shore. Or as he realized or because he realized
that the police were on to him, Bernie quickly moved his
millions off shore. Both of them are correct,
both of them are okay. But if you ever want to make very sure that
your adverb participle is understood as an adverb participle, sometimes
add the conjunction. You can have the participle, but add
the conjunction just to make sure. So if I say: "Delivering his speech to
the council, Frank had a heart attack." So, Frank, who was delivering his speech
to the council, had a heart attack. But I don't want you to understand
that I'm saying something about Frank. I'm not saying that. I'm talking about what
happened during the time. So at the same time two things were happening,
a longer action and a quick action: Delivering his speech
and had a heart attack. So, I would add the conjunction "while" to
make sure you understand that I'm focusing on the adverb relationship, not
modifying Frank with an adjective. Okay? If you're not sure
use the conjunction. Now: "She refused to cooperate
while targeted by the media." In some cases you have to
include the conjunction. "She refused to cooperate targeted
by the media" doesn't make sense. because if you have this as an adjective,
then there must be a noun just before it. But here we don't have a
noun, we have a verb. So right away we understand that it's an adverb
clause, but we have to use the conjunction because by itself
it doesn't work. It looks like it could
be an adjective. We want to make sure you understand it's an
adverb so we add the conjunction, and then we can use the participle. "She refused to cooperate while
she was targeted by the media." Okay, so there you are, an
introduction to participles. I know they're a little bit
confusing and a little bit tricky, but they're used all the time. And especially if you're going to be doing a
reading, if you're going to be doing a test, if you're in school and you need to read,
if you just want to read newspapers because newspapers use them a lot, they can make all
their writing shorter, you have to understand how participles work and you have
to know how to use them yourself. So, if you have any questions about this, please
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