As I have suggested in class, every verb can be conjugated into several forms, two of which are participial forms.
To eat (infinitive form)
eat (present tense form)
ate (past tense form)
eating (present participial form)
eaten (past participial form)
In order for the present or past participial form to function as main verbs, they need helpers, thus “is eating,” “was eating,” “has eaten,” or “will have eaten,” etc.
But as we have noted, some constructions look a lot like linking constructions. Are they? My best advice is to consider all of these constructions as main verbs with auxiliaries, yet distinctions can and should be made. Consider the following sentences.
Zoey’s manner is engaging.
After dinner, she was tired
The man was running for his life.
Each sentence can be described as having a verb phrase comprised of an auxiliary followed by a participle. Yet in the first two sentences, the participles may reasonably be seen to have modification power over the subjects. In other words you can usefully describe them as predicate adjectives. In the third sentence, this is more difficult to argue because the participle “running” pretty forcefully describes an action in itself, not the subject of the sentence.
Here is a simple guideline to make such distinctions.
Any participle that follows a linking verb and that clearly describes the subject may be identified as a subject complement. A participle that follows a linking verb but denotes action should be described as the main verb following its auxiliary.
All of this is lovely — we can begin to discriminate between the quality of verb phrases that make use of participles, but the subject still remains tricky and open to interpretation. How would you classify the verbs below?
Zoey’s favorite activity is sleeping.
Zoey is sleeping.
(I’ve seen the first described as a linking verb with participle; we wouldn’t say that about the second would we?)
