Participial phrase

Introduction

- Participle: a verbal that functions as an adjective.

- A participial phrase is a participle and its accompanying word or words.

Examples:

Interesting teacher : a teacher who is interesting

Interested student : a student who is interested

- There are two types of participles: present participles and past participles. Present participles end in -ing. Past participles of regular verbs end in –ed.

-Why using participial phrase?

The participial phrase is just another way to compound sentences. It provides a variety of sentence style to avoid producing boring paragraph.

Examples:

-The old man is my professor.

-He is carrying a brown bag.

You want to say that there is a man who is carrying a brown bag, and he is your professor. You can add “who is” to connect the sentences:

The old man who is carrying a brown bag is my professor. (you got a “complex sentence”)

Or, you can omit the “who is” and taa-daa... You created something called “participial phrase”.

The old man carrying a brown bag is my professor.

Now, take a look to these sentences:

-I walked into the room
-I found that everything was in a mess.

You wanted to say that you walked into a room, and when you got there, you found that everything was in a mess. To combine these two sentences, you may use a conjunction “and” , and you got a compound sentence:

I walked into the room and found that everything was in a mess.

Or change “walked” into “walking”, remove the first subject, and you got a participial phrase:

Walking into the room, I found that everything was in a mess.

Note:

to produce a participial phrase, use the same subject between the clauses, otherwise, you will produce a dangling construction.

Meaning:

• Cause

Bewitched by his charm, I lost my words.

Not wearing the uniform, he is not allowed to enter the class.

• Time

after: Having finished his job, he went out for coffee.

when: Opening the window, Lois was shocked by a green figure.

Placement

A participial phrase is flexible, a structure that can be placed at the beginning, middle, or end of a sentence. However, don't place it too far from the word it modifies. In order to prevent confusion, a participial phrase must be placed as close to the noun it modifies as possible, and the noun must be clearly stated.

Entering her house, Susan found a dead body.

Susan, entering her house, found a dead body.

But consider what happens when the participial phrase moves to the end of the sentence:

Susan found a dead body entering her house.

Punctuation

• When a participial phrase begins a sentence, a comma should be placed after the phrase.

Arriving at the store, I found that it was closed.

- If the participial phrase is a restrictive phrase, no commas should be used:

The boy wearing the Dracula costume is my cousin.

(“the boy” may refer to any boy, so “wearing the Dracula costume” is attached without comma to point out which boy is the speaker’s cousin)

- If the participle or participial phrase comes in the middle of a sentence, it should be set off with commas only if it is non-restrictive phrase.

Sam, smelling something strange, asked Dean to call the police.

(“smelling something strange” is not used to point out which Sam is asking Dean to call the police)

• If a participial phrase comes at the end of a sentence, a comma usually precedes the phrase if it modifies the first subject in the sentence, but not if the phrase directly follows the word it modifies.

Clark nervously gazed the woman, attracted by her beauty.

(The participial phrase modifies Clark, not woman. If the comma is omitted, the participial phrase will modify the woman, not Clark)

Paradigm

Paradigm is a pattern of substitional relationship of a set of linguistic units in a particular linguistic context. Based on the definition, paradigm has three main points, those are:

1. system of substitutional relationship
2. System of a s of linguistic unit (linguistic unit: morphemes/words)
3. System in particular context

(Don’t think too much about them. You don’t need to memorize those confussing words above. It’s more important for you to see paradigm in real sentence)

A. Paradigm in word

-s, -ion, -ed, -or in the word “act” are one paradigm since if those suffixes are added to the word “act”, the words will be grammatical. In this case, you can subtitute –s with -or, -ed or –ion (the meaning is different of course, but in paradigm, we are not talking about meaning. It’s about grammatical or not.). You will understand the meaning of acts, actor, action, and acted. But you can’t add suffix –ment to the word “act” (you won’t say “actment”). So suffix –ion, -s, and –ment are not paradigm. Do you get it?

Acts, action, actor, and acted are called paradigm set, which means “a set of words that have the same stem”. In this case, the stem is “act”.

B. Paradigm in sentence:

The pronouns you, we, and they can replace each other. If you replace “you” with “they” or “we”, the sentence will be grammatical, but if you replace “you” with “I” or “he”, the sentence will be ungrammatical. You can’t say “I are walking” or “He are walking”. So, in this sentence (remember, in this sentence!) “you”, “we”, and “they” are not paradigm with “I”, “he”, and “she”.

But “I”, “you”, “she”, and “he” are paradigm in this sentence:

If you have got the idea, now take a look to this sentence:

	She is teaching.

Of course you know that the word “teaching” can be replaced by “cooking”, “painting”, or “writing”. But what if you replace “teaching” with “beautiful”, or “betrayed”? Of course the sentence will be grammatical, but they don’t belong to the same class of word. So, are they paradigm? The answer is yes. Once again, it’s about grammatical or not.

Take a look to the picture below.

“sleep”, “talk”, and “watch” belong to the same class of word. “Sleeping”, “talking”, and “watching” belong to the same class of word. However, “sleep” and “sleeping” don’t belong to the same class of word although they belong to the same part of speech, i.e verb.

Class of word that has the same paradigm is called as form class. Therefore, in this sentence, “sleeping”, “talking”, and “watching” are form class. But “sleeping” and “clever” are not form class although they are paradigm in this sentence since “clever” and “sleeping” don’t belong to the same class of word.

Plural nouns

A. Regular Plurals

The plurals is regularly formed by the addition of suffix -(e)s, which is pronounced:

• /z/ for the words end in / b g d v ð m n ŋ r l ə y w h/

cub /kΛb/ ==> cubs /kΛbz/

key /ki:/ ==> keys /ki:z/

• /s/ for the words end in / p t k f θ /

cup /kΛp/ ==> cups /kΛps/

cat /kæt/ ===> cats /kæts/

• /iz/ for the words end in /s z ž š č ĵ /

glasses /glæ:s/ ==> glasses /glæ:sis/

• /iz/+ a change of final consonant of the stem
  -/s/ ==> /z/ in one word only:

house /haUs/ ==> houses /haUzIz/

-/f/ ==> /v/ in about a dozen words

knife /naif/ ==> knives /naivz/

wife /waif/ ==> wives /waivz/

• /θ/ ==> / ð/ in about eight words

path /pǽθ/ ==> /pǽðz/

growth /grouθ/ ==> /grouðz/

B. Irregular Plurals

1. Vowel Change

man – men

woman – women

foot – feet

goose – geese

2. adding -(r)en

child – children

ox – oxen

3. Consonant change

calf – calves

knife – knives

shelf – shelves

Some words ending in -f take -ves in the plural, as shown above. The majority, including all nouns ending in -ff, take regular plural endings:

beliefs, chiefs, puffs, reefs, roofs, cliffs, etc

There is variation with a few forms:

dwarf – dwarf/ dwarves

hoof – hoofs/ hooves

wharf – wharfs/ wharves

4. Latin and Greek Plurals

a. Latin nouns ending in -us

alumnus – alumni

calculus – calculi

locus – loci

terminus – termini

b. Latin nouns ending in -um

aquarium – aquaria

stratum – strata

memorandum – memoranda

millenium – millenia

c. Latin nouns ending in -a

alga – algae

antenna – antennae

larva – larvae

d. Latin nouns ending in -ex/ -ix

appendix – appendices

index – indices

There is variation with the plural of index, usually correlating with a difference in meaning: the bibliographical meaning takes -es, while the mathematical meaning takes -ces:

- Citation indexes are a widely used method of tracking down other, later papers relevant to a query.

- The algebraic indices would be relatively easy to apply.

e. Greek nouns ending in -is

axis – axes

crisis – crises

oasis – oases

thesis – theses

f. Greek nouns ending in -on

automaton – automata

criterion – criteria

phenomenon – phenomena

ganglion – ganglia

Criteria and phenomena are occasionally used as singular forms:

The criteria is that the songs have to have a character.

However, criterion and phenomenon are the preferred singular forms.

C. Zero Plurals

Some nouns have a zero plural, i.e. they have no overt plural ending, though they have plural meaning and concord. It usually happens to the words for some animals.

Sheep, deer, buffalo, trout, fish, salmon, grouse.

The zero plural is also regularly used for dozen, hundred, foot, mile, thousand, million preceded by numerals:

two dozen people, five thousand dollars, 40 million ants, two foot square strips, a three-mile-square area

but:

dozens of people, millions of share

references:

-Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English, 1999, Doughlas Biber, et.al, Person Education Limited, England

-An Introduction of Descriptive Linguistics

Parallelism

In order to make your ideas in your sentences clear and understandable, words, phrases, and clauses should have parallelism –that is, the sentence structures should be grammatically balanced. A parallel construction is the repetition of grammatical patterns within a sentence or a series of sentences. By using similar grammatical form to express equal ideas, your sentences will flow smoothly, and your writing style will improve.

Use similar grammatical structures to balance your writing. If the first structure is a noun, make all of the other nouns; if it is a phrase, make all of the others phrases; if it is a clause, make all of the others clauses.

Incorrect : A student needs textbooks, notebooks, and he needs pens.

Correct : A student needs textbooks, notebooks, and pens. (Balance noun with nouns)

Incorrect : A student who does well in exams attends class, reads the textbooks, and he reviews the notes.

Correct : A student who does well in exams attends class, reads the textbooks, and reviews the notes. (Balance clause with clause)

Using parallelism

Conjunction (and, or, but)

Words, phrases, and clauses that are joined by and, or, and but are written in parallel form. Notice the parallel structures joined by conjunctions in the following sentences.

• People accused him of being a magician and that he was a fraud. (incorrect)

People accused him for being a magician and a fraud. (Correct)

Correlative conjunctions

Correlative conjunctions are placed differently before the elements they join in the sentence.

• Both … and …

Congress has provided the means for both regulating pesticides and ordering their removal if dangerous.

• Either … or …

She wanted to eat either spaghetti or steak.

• Neither … nor …

Neither Spiderman nor Tarzan went to the party.

• Not only … but also …

At the present time, air pollution is controlled through laws passed not only to reduce the pollutant at their sources, but also to set up acceptable standards of air quality.

Comparisons (than, as)

• Than

Incorrect : Sleeping is much better than to work overtime.

Correct : Sleeping is much better than working overtime

• As

Correct : The members of the US House of Representatives are elected by district as the members of the British House of Commons are.

By repeating the preposition, the articles, or the subordinating conjunctions, the parallelism becomes clearer and more effective.

• I believe that eating chocolate makes you fat and that eating apples keeps you slim.

All the words in the first parallel structure do not have to be repeated in the second. You may repeat all or some of the words, depending upon what you wish to emphasize.

Before you write a paper a paper or (before) (you) take a test, you must organize your thoughts.

Not only ... but also ...

When you use the conjunction “not only … but also…” to join independent clause, the word order sometimes causes problems. Here are some guidelines to help you.

• If not only comes at the beginning of the first clause, use auxiliary verbs right after not only.

Not only does she come from a rich family, but she is also very beautiful.

Not only will you see beautiful scenery, but you also get new experiences.

• If not only doesn’t come at the beginning of the first clause, use statement word order, and:

1. Place not only before main verbs

She not only comes from a rich family, but she is also very beautiful. (not only is placed before main verb comes)

1. Place not only after to be or auxiliary verbs.

Examples:

He is not only the most popular boy at school, but he also won last year science competition. (not only is placed after to be)

My mother can not only cook well, but she is also a good listener. (not only is placed after modal)

• When but also appears in a clause with a form of the verb to be, or with auxiliaries or modals, the word also comes after the verb form.

She can not only make a good poem, but she can also write a novel. (also comes after modal)

She has not only learned to speak four languages, but she has also taught literature at Harvard University for five years. (also is placed after auxiliary)

• When but also appears in a clause with a simple present or simple past tense verb, the word also comes before the verb.

He not only works full-time, but he also takes a course at night school. (also comes after the verb takes)

He not only ran his own business, but he also opened a school in Africa. (also comes after the verb opened)