Sentence Correction

If Dr. Wade was right, any apparent connection of the eating of highly processed foods and excelling at sports is purely coincidental.

A) If Dr. Wade was right, any apparent connection of the eating of
B) Should Dr. Wade be right, any apparent connection of eating
C) IF Dr. Wade is right, any connection that is apparent between eating of
D) If Dr. Wade is right, any apparent connection between eating
E) Should Dr.Wade have been right, any connection apparent between eating

OA:D, OG says that 'excelling' is a participle but i think it is a gerund..

A gerund is a verbal that acts as a noun and ends with "ing".

A participle is a verbal that acts as an adjective and ends with either "ing" or "ed".

Here I think that excelling is being used as an adjective and not as a noun. So I think OG is correct in this case.

Hope this helps!

Birottam Dutta wrote:A gerund is a verbal that acts as a noun and ends with "ing".

A participle is a verbal that acts as an adjective and ends with either "ing" or "ed".

Here I think that excelling is being used as an adjective and not as a noun. So I think OG is correct in this case.

Hope this helps!

if excelling is adjective then what is the noun that it modifies. Sports cannot be noun because that is object of preposition and noun would be subject of prepositional phrase - at sports

vikram4689 wrote:

Birottam Dutta wrote:A gerund is a verbal that acts as a noun and ends with "ing".

A participle is a verbal that acts as an adjective and ends with either "ing" or "ed".

Here I think that excelling is being used as an adjective and not as a noun. So I think OG is correct in this case.

Hope this helps!

if excelling is adjective then what is the noun that it modifies. Sports cannot be noun because that is object of preposition and noun would be subject of prepositional phrase - at sports

Both Eating an Excelling are gerunds. However, 'the eating of highly ..' is a complex gerund phrase (notice the article 'the'). on the other hand , 'excelling at sports' is a simple gerund phrase (which can be used as a participle in some other sentence, such as - Ram is excelling at sports ).