(For definition see Lesson 131.)
_Singing birds delight us_. Here _singing_ has lost its verbal nature, and
expresses a permanent quality of birds--telling what kind of birds,--and
consequently is a mere adjective. _The singing of the birds delights us_.
Here _singing_ is simply a noun, naming the act and taking adjective
modifiers.
There are two kinds of participles; [Footnote: Grammarians are not agreed
as to what these words that have the nature of the verb and that of the
noun should be called. Some would call the simple forms _doing_, _writing_,
and _injuring_, in sentences (1), (6), and (7), Lesson 38, _Infinitives_.
They would also call by the same name such compound forms as _being
accepted_, _having been shown_, and _having said_ in these expressions:
"for the purpose of being accepted;" "is the having been shown over a
place;" "I recollect his having said that." But does it not tax even
credulity to believe that a simple Anglo-Saxon infinitive in _-an_, only
one form of which followed a preposition, and that always _to_, could have
developed into many compound forms, used in both voices, following almost
any preposition, and modified by _the_ and by nouns and pronouns in the
possessive? No wonder the grammarian Mason says, "An infinitive in _-ing_,
set down by some as a modification of the simple infinitive in _-an_ or
_-en_, is a perfectly unwarranted invention.
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