A participle is a verb which is partly a verb and partly an adjective.

Read the following sentence:

• Hearing a loud noise, the baby woke up.

Here the word hearing modifies the noun baby as an adjective does. It is formed from the verb hear and has an object. The word hearing, therefore, exhibits the properties of both a verb and an adjective. It is called a participle. It may also be called a verbal adjective.

There are two kinds of participles: the present participle and the past participle

The present participle ends in -ing and represents an action as going on or incomplete. Examples are: running, writing, walking, reading, thinking, knocking, speaking etc.

• We saw a boy wearing a black shirt.
• A girl carrying a basket of flowers walked into the room.
• Knocking at the door, the old man demanded admission.

Past participle

The past participle usually ends in -ed, -d, -t, -en or -n. It represents a completed action. Examples are: written, broken, driven, deceived, laden, seen, been etc.

• Driven by rain, they took shelter under a tree.
• We saw trees laden with fruit.

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1. Non-finite verbs