The major way to distiguish a main verb and a verb phrase with a participle in a sentence is to pay close attention to how the verb functions or what element does it modify.
While main verbs express action, participles look like verbs but function as modifiers or adjectives, and they usually end in -ed or -ing.
For example, in "The smiling postman waved at the children", the participle "smiling" functions as a modifier, indicating what kind of postman was "waving" (the main verb expressing an action).
Another example would be "The meal cooked last night smelled good". Here, "cooked last night" explains which meal performed the action expressed by the main verb "smelled".
To conclude, while main verbs express or indicate action, verb phrases with a participle function as adjectives modifying nouns.
It depends on what that paragraph says. I don't have sufficient context to provide a solid answer.
If I had to guess, your paragraph was most likely about the conflict between ideals of individualism and community.
I believe this an example of complex sentence structure.
My reasoning is that most of these sentences are in fact compound complex sentences-
Compound-complex sentences contain two independent clauses and at least one dependent clause.
An example of a complex sentence is this: “I burned dinner but not the cake.”
Answer:
Because it was raining, the soccer game was canceled.
A dependent clause is a phrase that can't stand alone as a sentence. For example, "It was raining" can stand alone, and is an independent clause. "Because it was raining" cannot stand alone, thus a dependent clause.
We can actually deduce here that the system of "checks and balances" contributes to American democracy because it helps to check-mate the power of the branches of government and makes each one not to gain too much.
<h3>What is checks and balances?</h3>
Checks and balances is known as the system that was introduced into American democracy. The purpose was to monitor the power of each arm of government and to make sure no one weighs power above the other.
In other words, checks and balances help to make that each arm of government doesn't go extreme.
This is why if Congress writes laws, the president must sign it and the Supreme Court may decide reverse.
This also makes the branches of government to work together.
Learn more about checks and balances on brainly.com/question/8927972
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