What’s a Participle? (Present Participle vs. Past Participles)

December 21, 2022

Participles are part verbs and part adjectives (by sometimes modifying nouns) in sentences.

Elan Yash

Elan is head of design and tech. He's also a contributor at Grammarflex.

Learning about participles and their role in English grammar can be challenging.

This article is Grammarflex’s comprehensive breakdown on the participle; which, to put it bluntly, are a linguistic (and philological) doozy. Take your time because participles are a difficult concept in grammar to grasp, but a worthwhile pursuit nonetheless! Let the lesson marinate, folks.

Contents

What’s a participle in grammar?

Participles are forms of verbs which can function as an adjective by sometimes modifying nouns in sentences. We call them participles because they participate in various parts of speech by being part-verb-part-adjective.

We use participles either as adjectives or to form certain tenses, such as the present continuous, present perfect and past perfect tense. There are two main types of participles: the present participle and the past participle.

The present and past participle

Verbs ending in –ing, such as hearing, thinking, walking and talking are what we call present participles.

Hidden, driven, walked, talked, written are all past participles (which can appear identical to the simple past tense). Most past participles end in –ed, though irregular verbs use their own endings.

I am working.

2. He had sung there before.

3. She seems to have mistaken your intentions.

The first sentence (“I am working“) uses the present participle “working” along with a form of ‘to be‘ (am, is), which constructs the present continuous or progressive tense. This shows the action or events as currently ongoing or in-progress. We therefore use the present continuous/progressive to denote what is happening at this moment, or at the time of speaking.

The second sentence (“He had sung there before“) is constructed in the past perfect tense. To form the past perfect, we use the past participle of the verb, i.e., ‘sung‘, along with the auxiliary verb had, in the past tense. We communicate in the past perfect when we want to denote past actions that occurred in a series or in succession to one another.

Finally, the third sentence uses the present tense have with the past participle of the verb ‘mistake’, mistaken. The combination of have + past participle therefore constructs the present perfect tense, which we use to relay experiences we have, or events from the past which connect or relate to the present.

What’s the past participle?

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The past participle is the form of the verb that pairs auxiliary verbs in the construction of perfect tenses, such as the past perfect, present perfect and future perfect tenses. We also form the passive voice in grammar with the past participle plus the auxiliary had, (that’s to say, to write in the passive voice use the past perfect tense or aspect).

The formula for the past perfect tense is auxiliary [had] + the past participle verb [written].

The past participle form of regular verbs end in -ed (e.g., worked, talked, laughed, studied), and look the identical to the simple past tense verb conjugation.

The past participle form of irregular verbs end in something other than -ed (e.g., bitten, frozen, written).

Take a look at these sentences in the past perfect tense:

I had caught ten fish before my dad caught one.

They had eaten lunch already, so they weren’t hungry.

He had written three books and he was working on another one.

W‍e write in the past perfect tense to more effectively communicate when past actions or events occurred up until another point, also in the past. It’s especially helpful when we want to clarify the order in which multiple past actions took place, and the correct order these past actions occurred in.

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To write in the present perfect tense, we pair the past participle + appropriate form of the auxiliary verb have (in the present tense). See examples of sentences in the present perfect tense: