NRTC English: How to identify and use a participial phrase

ONE BIG THING to note about a participial phrase is that it has only one function: it modifies the subject (a noun or a pronoun) of a sentence. It describes the subject or tells us what they are or what they are doing, or even what they have done.

It is this adjectival function that differentiates it from gerunds which is also the -ing form of a verb. In the case of a gerund, its uses and functions are limited to the uses and functions of nouns (subject, object, complement), whereas a participial phrase functions only as an adjective.

Let’s look at these examples:

1. Wounded by a lion, the hunter trudged home.
2. The man, seeing his wife sleep with another man, decided that the marriage is over between them.
3. I always enjoy some unrivalled privilege, being the last child of my family.
4. Turning the page of the book, I saw your name.
5. Cynthia, watching an old movie, drifted in and out of sleep.
6. Confused by the man’s eccentric behaviour in her room, the little girl cried out for help.
7. I was drinking coffee in a mug made of ceramic.

As you may have noticed above, a participial phrase is headed by either a present participle of a verb (turning, being, watching, dancing etc) or past participles (wounded, made, confused, cut, soaked etc). This is where it gets its name; the reason we call it a participial phrase. It begins or starts with a present or past participle.

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It is imperative to write here that a participial phrase can begin a sentence, in this case it will be marked by a comma after it, as you can see in examples 1, 4, and 6; it may also appear in the middle position (marked also by a comma before and after it) as you can see in examples 2 and 5; and lastly, it may appear at the final position (marked also by a comma before it), as you can see in example 3 or without a comma as you can see in example 7.

Past participial phrases that start with the word “having” are known as perfect participial phrases. They describe an action that has already finished.

1. Having finished my homework, I put on the TV.
2. Halima, having done her assignment, hurried out to see her boyfriend.
3. The man came back home unhappy, having been sacked from work.

Finally, it is important to note that a participial phrase must have an identified subject that it modifies or describes in a sentence; and this modifier—participial phrase—must not be far away from the subject it modifies or describes. Failure to adhere to this norm will result in a dangling modifier, a phrase or clause that is not clearly and logically related to the word or words it modifies (i.e. is placed next to) or misplaced modifier, a word, phrase, or clause that is improperly separated from the word it modifies / describes.

“A dangling modifier is a type of ambiguous grammatical construct whereby a grammatical modifier could be misinterpreted as being associated with a word other than the one intended. A dangling modifier has no subject and is usually a participle.”

Wikipedia