OBS. 13.—­To distinguish the participle from the participial noun, the learner should observe the following four things:  1.  Nouns take articles and adjectives before them; participles, as such, do not. 2.  Nouns may govern the possessive case before them, but not the objective after them; participles may govern the objective case, but not so properly the possessive. 3.  Nouns, if they have adverbs, require the hyphen; participles take adverbs separately, as do their verbs. 4.  Participial nouns express actions as things, and are sometimes declined like other nouns; participles usually refer actions to their agents or recipients, and have in English no grammatical modifications of any kind.

OBS. 14.—­To distinguish the perfect participle from the preterit of the same form, observe the sense, and see which of the auxiliary forms will express it:  thus, loved for being loved, is a participle; but loved for did love, is a preterit verb.  So held for did hold, stung for did sting, taught for did teach, and the like, are irregular verbs; but held for being held, stung for being stung, taught for being taught, and the like, are perfect participles.

OBS. 15.—­Though the English participles have no inflections, and are consequently incapable of any grammatical agreement or disagreement, those which are simple, are sometimes elegantly taken in a plural sense, with the apparent construction of nouns; but, under these circumstances, they are in reality neither nouns nor participles, but participial adjectives construed elliptically, as other adjectives often are, and relating to plural nouns understood.  The ellipsis is sometimes of a singular noun, though very rarely, and much less properly.  Examples:  “To them who are the called according to his purpose.”—­Rom., x, 28.  That is—­“the called ones or persons.”  “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”—­Matt., xxii, 32.  “Neither is it found in the land of the living.”—­Job, xxviii, 13. “The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day.”—­Isaiah, xxxviii, 19.  “Till we are made fit to live and reign with him and all his redeemed, in the heavenly glory forever.”—­Jenks’s Prayers, p. 18.

   “Ye blessed of my Father, come, ye just,
    Enter the joy eternal of your Lord.”—­Pollok, B. x, l. 591.

    “Depart from me, ye cursed, into the fire
    Prepared eternal in the gulf of Hell.”—­Id., B. x, l. 449.

EXAMPLES FOR PARSING.

PRAXIS VII.—­ETYMOLOGICAL.

In the Seventh Praxis it is required of the pupil—­to distinguish and define the different parts of speech, and the classes and modifications of the ARTICLES, NOUNS, ADJECTIVES, PRONOUNS, VERBS, and PARTICIPLES.