Definition:
A word group consisting of a present participle or past participle, plus any modifiers, objects, and complements.
A participial phrase commonly functions as an adjective.
See also:
- Building Sentences with Participial Phrases
- Creating and Arranging Participial Phrases
- Participial Phrases in Momaday's House Made of Dawn
- Participle
- Postmodifier
- Sentence Combining With Participial Phrases
Examples and Observations:
- Invented by an Indiana housewife in 1889, the first dishwasher was driven by a steam engine.
- A referee, always working before unfriendly crowds, has orders to exude poise under the most trying circumstances.
- "The Angelus Building looms on the corner of its block, seven stories, thick with dark windows, caged in a dingy mesh of fire escapes."
(Edmund Wilson, Travels in Two Democracies, 1936) - "Goldsmith smiled, bunching his fat cheeks like twin rolls of smooth pink toilet paper."
(Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts, 1933) - "Here and there through the smoke, creeping warily under the shadows of tottering walls, emerged occasional men and women."
(Jack London, "Story of an Eyewitness: The San Francisco Earthquake." Collier's Weekly, May 5, 1906) - "Gramp Stevens sat in a lawn chair, watching the mower at work, feeling the warm, soft sunshine seep into his bones."
(Clifford D. Simak, "City," 1944) - "A trailer door opened and a young woman stepped out, leading a child who beat upon her legs with a wooden spoon."
(David Sedaris, "Naked," 1997) - "The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail."
(Peter Benchley, Jaws, 1974) - "The idiot lived in a black and gray world, punctuated by the white lightning of hunger and the flickering of fear."
(Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human, 1953) - "Whirling happily in my starchy frock, showing off my biscuit-polished patent-leather shoes and lavender socks, tossing my head in a way that makes my ribbons bounce, I stand, hands on hips, before my father."
(Alice Walker, "Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self," 1983) - "One evening, perhaps a decade ago, I was walking along Canal Street in Manhattan’s Chinatown when a fishmonger, rushing out of his shop carrying a tank full of eels, slipped. Before he could let out a curse, there were eels and elvers everywhere: dark and gleaming, slithering over pedestrians’ feet, wriggling off onto the asphalt, escaping through the storm drains, animating every crack in the concrete."
(Ben Ehrenreich, "Eels Über Alles: On Julio Cortázar." The Nation, Dec. 26, 2011) - "We find participial phrases in three positions. Participial phrases can come before a main clause (initial position), after a noun phrase they are modifying (middle position), or after a main clause (final position). . . .
What kind of punctuation do we need to use when participial phrases occur in different positions?
- When the participial phrase comes before a main clause, it is followed by a comma.
- When the participial phrase follows a main clause, a comma must come before the participial phrase.
- When the participial phrase occurs in mid-sentence position, we use two commas. One comma comes before the participial phrase and the other comes after it.
- "Then he saw the eagles across the distance, two of them, riding low in the depths and rising diagonally toward him."
(N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn, 1969)
Also Known As: participle clause, participial clause
