RESTRICTIVE AND NONRESTRICTIVE PARTICIPIAL PHRASES
Participles function as adjectives in a sentence, while participial phrases are groups of words that consist of a participle, but not a complete sentence. There are two types of participles, namely, present participles and past participles. Present participles end in –ing, while Past participles end in -ed, -en, -d, -t, -n, or –ne, like baked, eaten, dealt, and other action words.
Participial phrases can be restrictive and nonrestrictive. It is a restrictive clause if it directly narrows down to the word it modifies. A few of the examples are the following:
The burned food was eaten by the kid.
The roasted turkey was prepared for the thanksgiving.
The bathed dog shook its head.
The injured girl who played the Frisbee tournament wished she had stayed home.- From this sentence, it’s the “who” that restricts the sentence. It directly defines what the girl did.
From what you can observe in the sentences, it points out directly to the main topic. On the other hand, a nonrestrictive clause begins with a word that is surrounded by comma/s so that the sentence can still be provided with extra information. A few of the examples of nonrestrictive participial phrases are the following:
He ran into the wall, banging his nose in the process (Mills, 2011).
She yelled at me, making me cry (Mills, 2011).
Everyone over 50 was fired, causing an uproar (Mills, 2011).
Complete sentences:
He ran into the wall, banging his nose in the process, which made it bleed a lot.
She yelled at me, making me cry, I ran to my mother.
Everyone over 50 was fired, causing an uproar, they panicked.
The main difference between a restrictive and a nonrestrictive participle phrase is its limitation or restrictions. A restrictive participle phrase is only bounded to one topic and cannot be provided with extra information, while, a nonrestrictive participle phrase can be provided with extra information which is the purpose of the commas. Remember, if you want to add information, make sure to add a comma.
