3. Talking about the participle

The Participle

A participle is an adjective formed from a verb. To make a present participle, you add "-ing" to the verb, sometimes doubling the final consonant:

"think" becomes "thinking"

"fall" becomes "falling"

"run" becomes "running"

The second type of participle, the past participle, is a little more complicated, since not all verbs form the past tense regularly. The following are all past participles:

the sunken ship

a ruined city

a misspelled word

Note that only transitive verbs can use their past participles as adjectives, and that unlike other verbals, past participles do not take objects (unless they are part of a compound verb).

Past Participle

To form the past participle of a verb, add the ending -ed to the base form. (But note that many common verbs have irregular past participle forms.) The past participle is used in the following circumstances:

＊After the auxiliary have in the perfect tense

Has the gas chromatograph been fixed yet?

＊After a form of the auxiliary be in the passive voice

The gas chromatograph was fixed on Monday.

＊After the verbs have and get with a causative meaning

We had the gas chromatograph fixed last week.

＊As a passive participial adjective

The recently fixed gas chromatograph is broken again.

4. Discovering useful structures

You are next to do the exercises 1, 2, 3, and 4 on page 23 and 24.