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Learning Participial Phrases
with Famous Songs |
From VOA Learning English, this is Everyday Grammar.
“Don't Stop Believing” is one of the most popular
karaoke songs in the world.
You have probably heard the rock group Journey perform
the song even if you do not remember its name.
It begins like this:
Just a small-town girl
Livin' in a lonely world
She took the midnight train
Goin' anywhere
You can learn English grammar by singing along to the
words. In fact, you can learn how to use two parts of
speech: participles and participial phrases.
In today's program, we will explore a common grammatical
construction: the participial phrase.
Relative clauses
In an earlier Everyday Grammar, we discussed relative
clauses – groups of words that act like an adjective in
a sentence.
Common relative pronouns -- such as who, whom, which, or
that -- often begin the relative clause.
Here is an example: She is just a small-town girl who
lives in a lonely world.
In this sentence, the relative clause begins with the
word who. It is a clause because it has a subject and a
predicate. Predicates express what is being said about
the subject.
So, how does this discussion of relative clauses relate
to participial phrases?
Participial phrases are like shortened relative clauses.
When reading or listening, English learners often have
trouble understanding participial phrases. That is
because, unlike relative clauses, such phrases do not
have a pronoun – words like that, who, or which, for
example.
Do not fear! In the way you might derive a problem in
mathematics, you can also derive, or get, participial
phrases from relative clauses.
However, unlike complex math, creating participial
phrases can be fun.
What are participial phrases?
We are discussing participial phrases in an adjectival
role. A discussion of other common adjectival
participles is beyond the scope of this story.
A participial phrase is a group of words beginning with
a participle – in the present tense, the base form of a
verb plus an –ing ending.
These phrases often serve as an adjective in a sentence.
In general, you can change a relative clause to a
participial phrase by removing the relative pronoun and
the verb BE. Then add –ing to the end of the verb if it
does not already have an –ing ending.
Think back to the words of our example:
She is just a small-town girl who lives in a lonely
world.
If you take away the relative pronoun "who" and change
the verb "live" to "living," you get this sentence:
She is just a small-town girl living in a lonely world.
This sentence is almost exactly like the words you heard
in Journey's song, "Don't Stop Believing." The only
difference is they removed the subject, she is, for
artistic reasons.
So, what happens if the verb already has an –ing ending?
Here is an example that shows you this process is even
simpler.
Consider the following examples:
The young students who are taking the final exam look
afraid.
The young students taking the final exam look afraid.
These examples show you how to change a relative clause
to a participial phrase. When there is a relative
clause, you can remove the relative pronoun and the BE
verb.
You can also see that when the verb already ends in –ing,
you do not need to change it.
Place in a sentence:
You will often see participial phrases following a noun.
Think back to some of the words from Journey's song:
A small town girl living in a lonely world
In the example, the participial phrase living in a
lonely world is modifying the important noun, girl. This
phrase is describing the girl, so you know it is acting
like an adjective.
Like other adjectives, participles can sometimes move to
different places in a sentence. You will often see
participial phrases following a noun, but sometimes they
can come at the beginning of a sentence.
For example:
Walking at night, the hikers used headlamps.
The participial phrase "walking at night" is describing
the subject, the hikers.
When you see participial phrases at the beginning or end
of a sentence, they are modifying the subject of the
sentence.
We will discuss this idea in future Everyday Grammar
programs.
Practicing Participial phrases
with karaoke
Verbs from any of the sentence patterns we discussed in
earlier Everyday Grammar stories can work as
participles. If you recognize and understand the common
sentence patterns we discussed, then developing your own
sentences with participial phrases should be easy.
We are going to leave you with some homework. Can you
change these sentences with relative clauses to
sentences with participial phrases? Write about it in
the Facebook Comments Section below.
Do you recognize those people who are singing in the
karaoke room?
The old man who sings karaoke has a nice voice.
I’m John Russell.
And I'm Jill Robbins.
John Russell wrote this story for Learning English.
George Grow was the editor. |
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