use of past participle with present participle

[er_anirudh]

Hi Ron,

Many places i have seen that you have explained :

---one of them uses a past participle and the other uses a present participle, but they are used in parallel---

I am not clear with the proper usage of this funda. Detail explanation appreciated.

Example :

First discovered more than 30 years ago, Lina's sunbird, a four-and-a-half-inch animal found in the Phillipines and that resembles a hummingbird, has shimmering metallic colors on its head; a brilliant orange patch, bordered with red tufts, in the center of its breast; and a red eye.

a. Same as above
b. found in the Phillipines and that, resembling
c. found in the Phillipines and resembling
d. that is found in the Phillipines and it resembles
e. that is found in the Phillipines, resembling

I chose B, which is obviously a wrong choice.

[Jazmet]

Choice B has one issue - the placement of 'that' is inapt. it should have been after 'a four-and-a-half-inch animal'.

Is the correct answer E?
As this option correctly uses 'that' and the modifier "Resembling" and both of them refer to "a four-and-a-half-inch animal"

Present Participles mostly refer to the subjects of the previous clause or express the result of the previous clause.

Past Participles mostly refer to the immediately preceding nouns. For Ex - a brilliant orange patch, bordered with red tufts, in the center of its breast; and a red eye.
The part participle 'bordered' refers to the immediately preceding noun i.e., 'Patch'

[RonPurewal]

I don't remember what "participle" means. (If I mentioned it on another thread, that means I googled it twenty seconds before writing the post.)

But, it seems you're asking whether "-ed" and "-ing" type modifiers can be parallel.
Sure they can... if the context makes sense. Why wouldn't they be able to?

Just make sure you understand the function of each type.

* "-ING" modifiers are like "active" constructions. It's like saying that the noun DOES whatever action is in the "-ing" part.

* "-ED" modifiers are like "passive" constructions. It's like saying that whatever action HAPPENED TO the noun.

E.g.,
The fish eating yesterday at lunchtime was a shark.
--> Yesterday at lunchtime, I was watching a shark eat. E.g., at an aquarium.

The fish eaten at yesterday's lunch was salmon.
--> We ate salmon for lunch yesterday. (The eating happened to the salmon; the salmon didn't eat anything.)

[RonPurewal]

So, sure, you could have these kinds of things in parallel -- if that would make sense.

E.g.
The fire ant, unchecked by natural enemies and threatening scores of other species, must be controlled by human intervention.
--> "Unchecked" is in the -ed form, since no other species is checking the fire-ant population.
--> "Threatening" is in the -ing form, because the fire ant is doing the threatening.

[RonPurewal]

In fact, this is the problem with too much grammatical terminology -- it will prevent you from seeing similarities between technically "different" constructions. Or, in the worst case, learning too many terms will cause you to regard essentially similar constructions as "different".

Here's what I mean: Before looking at this post (and/or others like it), I never even would have thought of the idea that "-ed" and "-ing" modifiers couldn't be parallel. But that's because I wasn't encumbered with terminology like "participle"; I simply saw both of them as descriptions that played precisely the same grammatical role -- i.e., if you take one of them out of a sentence and replace it with the other one, you still get a grammatically identical sentence, although it will probably be nonsense. So, it was clear that putting them in parallel was just fine.

More importantly, you can create parallel structures even between grammatically distinct entities, as long as two things are true:
1/
They're playing the same role in the sentence;
2/
It's not possible to find structures that are more grammatically similar while still expressing the same ideas.
(Remember, you don't need to make this judgment -- just look at the multiple choices. If you don't see a better parallelism -- that still maintains the correct meaning! -- in the other choices, then there you go.)

An an example, consider #46 in the OG Diagnostic section (any of OG 11, 12, or 13 -- doesn't matter, the diagnostic sections are all the same).
I'm not allowed to post that problem here (and neither are you), but I can mention the relevant part here. You have "just as frequently" and "in the same way" in parallel. Clearly these are grammatically distinct (one is an adverb and the other isn't) -- but (1) they are both describing the same thing, and (2) there are no choices in which they are replaced with structures that are more alike.