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Doubt in Past particple

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Doubt in Past particple

by vishalwin » Wed Nov 25, 2015 9:41 pm
Hi,

Doubt1: I was studying past participles from MGMAT guide and I found 2 conflicting points:

5th edition: A Past Participle by itself is not a working verb.

6th edition: A Past Participle can be a verb all by itself but it cannot function as a noun.




Doubt 2:

1) Stoney NAMED the electron in 1894.

2) A venomous snake designated the emblem of the rebellion by the insurgency.


Both the sentences have subjects that agree in number "Stoney" in 1 and " venomous snake" in 2 and past participles "named" in 1 and "designated" in 2 but sentence 2 is wrong
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vishalwin
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by vishalwin » Sat Nov 28, 2015 8:20 am
Instructors Can you please help me.
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vishalwin
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by vishalwin » Tue Dec 08, 2015 10:55 pm
Can anyone help me?
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vishalwin
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by DavidG@VeritasPrep » Wed Dec 09, 2015 6:54 am
1) Stoney NAMED the electron in 1894.

2) A venomous snake designated the emblem of the rebellion by the insurgency.
What's confusing is that the past participle form of a regular verb and the past indicative are spelled the same. For example,

My daughter tired herself out. Here "tired" = past indicative (a simple past tense verb.)

Tired after a long day of work, I decided to take a nap. Here "tired" = past participle - it functions as an adjective modifying "I."

So "tired" can be used an adjective or a simple past tense verb. Memorizing rules here isn't going to be terrible helpful. Rather, you want to rely on logic and meaning.


1) Stoney NAMED the electron in 1894. Because "Stoney" performed the action, it's fine to say that Stoney "named" the electron. That makes sense.

But if you reverse the order of the sentence and write the electron named Stoney, you'd have nonsense, because the electron didn't perform the action. You'd want to write the electron was named by Stoney.

2) A venomous snake designated the emblem of the rebellion by the insurgency. Here, the snake did not perform the action. How could a snake designate something? Rather, it makes more sense to write the snake was designated by the insurgency. (Or to write the insurgency designated the snake)

Grammar rules are helpful at times in SC, but meaning and logic are, generally speaking, your primary tools. Many of the incorrect answers will be grammatically correct, but nonsensical.
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