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.
Answer and Explanation:
Henry's speech at the Virginia Convention is titled "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" where he expresses all the anger he feels towards England's domination of American territory. In this speech, he presents a persuasive tone, where he encourages the listeners to agree with his arguments and also to revolt against the English dominance. To achieve this he uses the rhetorical device called "pathos" which is the device that evokes the sentimentality of people and uses the emotions of the public to persuade them. In Henry's speech, this rhetorical feature can be observed in several sentences, especially in sentences such as:
- " What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament."
- "Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have?"
- "Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone."
