Another example of verbals exceeding the function of verbs to express the action of or state of being within a sentence is their function as modifiers of nouns or verbs. Participles and infinitives can modify, as in the header above, where the infinitive to modify modifies the word used, itself a verbal modifying the word verbals.

Participles
Participles not linked with a helping verb usually function as adjectives, but can also work as adverbs, as we will see below.

The easiest verbals for students to recognize are pre-positioned participles, that is, the ones that are in the obvious place for adjectives, immediately before a noun. If you show students a sentence like

The struggling students were no match for the challenging test.

they can easily recognize that struggling and challenging are both adjectives modifying the nouns they precede. Difficulties arise for them when participles introduce phrases that, as a whole, modify a noun. For instance,

Giving his friend Sylvester a hearty slap on the back and slipping him a $100 bill, Tompkins followed Sylvester into the casino, crossing his fingers as he entered.

In this straightforward but tricky sentence, giving, slipping, and crossing all begin participial phrases that modify Tompkins. As I mention in another section of this site, the phrases work like snapshots of the man Tompkins: they describe his acts; we see him caught in the act, so to speak, of giving Sylvester a slap on the back, slipping him a "C note," and crossing his (Tompkins') fingers. The only "action" word in the sentence is followed.

I have found that students become confused about the difference between an implied action and a stated action, which accounts for their mistaking participial phrases for active (finite) verbs. It doesn't always help to tell them that every verb needs a subject, because some will jump to the noun being modified and call that the "subject." If I can substitute an obvious adjective for the phrase (such as the word superstitious for the last phrase in the sentence above) then they can see the correspondence between the ideas expressed in the phrase and its grammatical connection to the modified word. Failing that, I tell them to memorize the mnemonic "if it looks like a verb, ends in -ing but isn't preceded by a subject and a helping verb, it is NOT a verb." Oversimplification, perhaps, but it prevents them from jumping to ungrammatical conclusions.

Participles are sometimes used as adverbs, modifying the verb of a sentence, as in this example:

Mozart spent the afternoon languidly composing his latest symphony.

where the participle, composing, modifies the verb spent rather than the composer himself. Or in this example:

Robin ran screaming out of the cemetery, followed by a cotillion of zombies.

In this sentence, there are two participles, screaming, which functions as an adverb, describing how Robin ran, and followed, an adjectival participle, modifying Robin herself.

Infinitives as Modifiers

In the sentence

Without his bunion to hamper him, Pele scored three goals in the fourth quarter with only minutes to go.

the infinitives to hamper and to go both act as adjectives (modifying, respectively, bunion and minutes ). I tell students to ask, What kind of bunion was it? and tell them that to go modifies the word minutes just as the words a few would.

In the following sentences, note how the infinitive phrases act as adverbs.

The bear stepped aside to let us pass.

We were eager to hear their whispers but could only see the shadows of their smiles.

It's nice to think of others.

The Key to Understanding Grammar
By explaining to students that words can appear to be particular parts of speech (for instance, running may, at first sight, seem to be a verb) but when they analyze the function of those words in a sentence, we see that they are behaving quite differently from how we "expect" them to (running can be a noun ["Running is good exercise."], a participial verb ["The tigers were running faster than we were."], a pre-positioned adjective ["I bought a new pair of running shoes after the marathon."] or a participle introducing a phrase ["Running out of gas, our car coughed itself to a stop at the foot of the volcano."]). By exemplifying the seeming disparity through verbals, a teacher can reinforce the functional roles of words. Students who understand how words interact with each other in sentences will have the key to the basic rules of the language and understand their application. Understanding syntax, how words work in sentences, moves students a long way down the path toward more effective writing.