Is It Gerund Or Participle

[zaffar]

Dear teacher,
I want to know about the authenticity of these sentences. Which one is correct?
1: She came out of the room, crying loudly.
or
2: She came, crying loudly, out of the room.
I have heard that only participle are modified by the gerunds; therefore, It must be the case of participle "crying" or is it gerund? please confirm which one of the two sentences is correct.
kind regard,
zaffar

[Casiopea]

[1] She came out of the room, crying loudly.
[2] She came, crying loudly, out of the room.

Both are correct. You could even use [3]:

[3] Crying loudly, she came out of the room.

A gerund is a word that looks like a verb but functions as a noun. That is, it ends in -ing but it can be a subject, an object of the verb, or an object of a preposition. In [1] through [3] "crying" doesn't function as a noun (a subject or an object), so it must be a participle.

Also, gerunds never require punctuation. Note, in [1] through [3] there is punctuation: a comma in each sentence.

"crying" is not a gerund. "crying" is a participle, a present participle. How do we know that? Consider,

[4] She came out of the room. She was crying loudly.

'crying' and 'was' form a continuous verb form. Participle, note the word "Part" in there, means it is part of a verb. Moreover, a participle modifies a (pro)noun, like this,

She, crying loudly, came out of the room.

'crying loudly' modifies 'She'.

A final test would be to ask, "Who was crying loudly?" The answer: "She". So, 'crying' must be a participle since it functions as part of the continuous verb 'was crying'.

Here's a great resource: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handou...g_verbals.html

All the best,