Past Participle for Sentence Correction

Consider these two sentences:

• The horse raced past the barn.
• The horse raced past the barn fell.

Believe it or not, both sentences have good grammar. But one of them makes a lot more sense than the other one. Let’s break them down and understand why.In the first sentence, the subject is “the horse.” Then, there’s a verb in the past tense: “raced.” The core of this sentence—the part of the sentence that tells you who did what—is “the horse raced.” There’s also a modifier, which tells you where the horse raced. In the second sentence, it looks like you’ve got the same subject and the same verb. However, once you get to the end of the sentence, there’s another verb, “fell.” A sentence can’t have two main verbs, not without a connector, such as “and,” in between them. In this sentence, the phrase “raced past the barn” isn’t part of the core. Instead, it’s a modifier—a very tricky modifier. To see how that works, let’s rewrite the sentence slightly: The horse, which was raced past the barn, fell. Now, it should be clearer that the “raced past the barn” part of the sentence is a modifier, and the core is actually “the horse fell.” In other words, the sentence says that a horse fell—why? Because a jockey (or someone) raced it past the barn. In the tricky sentence, the word “raced” is a past participle. Past participles are tough to identify. That’s because in English, they usually look just like normal past tense verbs. Since normal verbs are much more common than participles, you aren’t expecting to see a participle when you start reading. When you see the first three words of the sentence—“the horse raced”—you naturally assume that you’ve just read the main subject and verb of the sentence. Then, when you find a second verb, you get confused. You have to go back and “re-understand” the first part of the sentence. Here’s a summary so far:

• Past participles are verbs that usually end in “-ed.”
• A past participle can start a modifier.
• Past participles are tricky, because they look the same as regular past tense verbs. If you assume that a past participle is actually a regular verb, you’ll read the sentence incorrectly at first.

Here are some examples of good sentences where an “-ed” verb is the first word of a modifier. In every sentence, the modifier appears in bold.

1. The whale named Willy was finally free.
2. Sneha, accompanied by her sister Jaina, traveled to Milwaukee.
3. The student awarded first place was overcome by pride.
4. Several competitors selected for the finals were unable to attend.

Some of these sentences were probably easier for you to understand than others. However, they all have something in common. They all have an “-ed” verb right next to a noun, and then they have another past tense verb, later in the sentence. Let’s consider sentence number 3. The student awarded first place was overcome by pride. You might start reading this one and immediately assume that the student gave someone an award. That reading makes sense until you hit the word “was.” Then, the sentence seems strange. Let’s reevaluate the sentence. Awarded first place is actually a modifier—an “-ed” modifier—that describes the student. The core of the sentence is as follows: The student was overcome.