Present Participle: What It Is and How To Use It

Do you know what a present participle is? This article will provide you with all of the information you need on present participles, including its definition, usage, example sentences, and more!

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What is a present participle?

According to Walden, there are many different forms of verbs in the English language, from a simple form of the verb to complex:

  •   Future progressive tense
  •   Conditional perfect tense
  •   Present perfect tense
  •   Simple conditional tense
  •   Subjunctive tense
  •   Bare infinitive tense
  •   Infinitive tense
  •   Present progressive tense
  •   Simple present tense
  •   Past progressive tense
  •   Indicative tense
  •   Present participle tense
  •   Conditional progressive tense
  •   Present perfect progressive tense 
  •   Conditional tense
  •   Gerund tense or gerund phrase 
  •   Past perfect tense
  •   Conditional perfect progressive tense
  •   Perfect passive tense
  •   Simple future tense
  •   Present indicative tense
  •   Future perfect progressive tense
  •   Past perfect progressive tense
  •   To-infinitive tense
  •   Past progressive/continuous tense
  •   Simple past tense
  •   Present perfect continuous tense
  •   Future perfect tense
  •   Imperative tense
  •   Present perfect progressive/continuous tense
  •   Past participle tense
  •   Present continuous tense

This article will examine the present participle. According to Your Dictionary,  the present participle is always formed by adding the suffix -ing to a verb. This is often used with an auxiliary verb or helping verb like is, am, or are to form a compound verb that describes an action that is in progress. Past participle tenses are similar, but use the form base “ed” with the infinitive. 

The French language also contains the French present participle. According to Cliffs Notes, these may be used with the preposition en to form a gerund. The present participle of all French verbs ends in ‐ant, the English equivalent of ‐ing. The present participle of most French verbs both regular and irregular is formed by dropping the ‐ons ending from the nous form of the present tense and adding ‐ant. Below are some examples:

  •  Elle est partie, oubliant ses clefs. (She left, forgetting her keys.)
  •  Je préfère la natation. (I prefer swimming.)
  •  Je vois des gens qui portent des sacs. (I see some people who are carrying bags.)
  •  La pâtisserie est un art. (Pastry making is an art.)
  •  Étant occupé, je l’ai ignoré. (Being busy, I ignored him.)
  •  Il dort. (He is sleeping.)
  •  Elle est arrivée en courant. (She arrived running.)
  •  Il gagne beaucoup en travaillant. (He earns a lot by working.)
  •  Il étudie en écoutant la radio. (He studies while listening to the radio.)
  •  Je trouve ces filles charmantes. (I find those girls charming.)
  •  Il commence par chanter. (He begins by singing.)
  •  Je vois des gens portant des sacs. (I see some people carrying bags.)
  •  Je le ferai sans qu’il le sache. (I’ll do it without his knowing it.)
  •  Regardant la télé, je me suis endormi. (Watching TV, I fell asleep.)
  •  Il finit par danser. (He ends by dancing.)
  •  Il parle en mangeant. (He speaks while eating.)
  •  Danser me plaît beaucoup. (Dancing gives me great pleasure.)
  •  Il est tombé en dansant. (He fell [while, when, upon, on, as he was] dancing.)
  •  J’adore le cyclisme. (I love cycling.)
  •  Il finit l’histoire en riant. (He finishes the story by laughing.)
  •  Ce sont des films amusants. (They are amusing films.)
  •  Il est entré criant. (He arrived screaming.)
  •  Elle pleure tout en souriant. (She cries even while smiling.)
  •  Il est en train de dormir. (He is sleeping.)

Many different languages also contain words that mean present participle. You may notice that some of these translations of present participle look and sound similar to one another. These are called cognates, which are words and phrases in different languages that likely have the same root or language of origin, causing them to sound the same. The below list of translations of present participle is provided by Word Sense

  •  Finnish: partisiipin preesens‎
  •  Norman: participe présent‎ (masc.) (Jersey)
  •  Greek: μετοχή του ενεστώτα‎ (fem.)
  •  Russian: прича́стие настоя́щего вре́мени‎ (neut.)
  •  German: Mittelwort der Gegenwart‎ (neut.), Partizipium präsentis‎ (neut.), Partizip Präsens‎ (neut.), Partizip I‎ (neut.)
  •  Faroese: nútíðar lýsingarháttur‎ (masc.)
  •  Mandarin: 現在分詞‎, 现在分词‎ (xiànzài fēncí)
  •  Latin: participium praesentis‎ (masc.) (n)
  •  Japanese: 現在分詞‎ (げんざいぶんし, genzai bunshi)
  •  Swedish: presensparticip‎ (common)
  •  Spanish: participio presente‎ (masc.)
  •  Czech: příčestí přítomné‎ (neut.)
  •  Portuguese: particípio presente‎ (masc.)
  •  Dutch: onvoltooid deelwoord‎ (neut.), tegenwoordig deelwoord‎ (neut.)
  •  French: participe présent‎ (masc.)
  •  Icelandic: lýsingarháttur nútíðar‎ (masc.)
  •  Catalan: participi present‎ (masc.)
  •  Afrikaans: teenwoordige deelwoord‎, onvoltooide deelwoord‎
  •  Welsh: rhangymeriad presennol‎ (masc.)
  •  Danish: præsens participium‎ (neut.) (c)
  •  Romanian: participiu prezent‎ (neut.)
  •  Hungarian: folyamatos melléknévi igenév‎

Below are examples of the present participle in literature, from Literary Devices:

  • “I drive through the electric gates of a three-acre estate, passing landscaped gardens before I pull up in front of a neocolonial mansion, parking beside a Bentley, two Porsches and a Lamborghini Spyder. Moonsamy, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, is waiting for me at the door.” – Inside Cape Town (by Joshua Hammer)
  • “Their hair in curlers and their heads wrapped in loud scarves, young mothers, fattish in trousers, lounge about in the speed-wash, smoking cigarettes, eating candy, drinking pop, thumbing magazines, and screaming at their children above the whir and rumble of the machines.” – In the Heart of the Heart of the Country (by William Gass)
  • ” . . . Standing / In the shoes of indecision, I hear them / Come up behind me and go on ahead of me / Wearing boots, on crutches, barefoot, they could never / Get together on any door-sill or destination—” – Sire (by W.S. Merwin)
  • “And standing on the sidelines during those first games were the veterans, holding the spaldeens, bouncing them, smelling them in an almost sacramental way.” – A Drinking Life (by Pete Hamill)
  • “He was discovered to be proud; to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend… He is, indeed; but, considering the inducement.” – Pride and Prejudice (by Jane Austen)

Overall, the present participle describes an action in progress.

Sources:

  1. Glossary of grammatical terms | OED 
  2. Verb Forms: “-ing,” Infinitives, and Past Participles – Grammar – Academic Guides | Walden University 
  3. present participle: meaning, translation, synonyms | Word Sense 
  4.  Participle Examples | Your Dictionary 
  5.  Present Participle – Examples and Definition of Present Participle | Literary Devices 
  6. Present Participles | Cliffs Notes