VBG_CLAUSE Present participial clauses
Definition
Present participle forms functioning as adverbial clauses. Excludes progressive aspect, going-to, and WHIZBG deletions.
Parent
Detection Rules
Present participle as adverbial clause modifier. Excludes WHIZ deletions (which use acl relation) and progressive aspect (which uses aux relation).
semgrex{pos:VBG}=vbg <advcl {}
pybiber
VBG with dep advcl or ccomp, preceded by punctuation. pybiber requires a comma or other punctuation immediately before the participle as a clause boundary marker. Also includes ccomp relations.
cql[dep="punct"] [pos="VBG" & dep="advcl|ccomp"]
Normalization
Per finite_verbs
Examples
Running to the door, he called out
Speaking softly, Gandalf began
He texted me saying no.
Source: le_foll_2024
Non-examples
He was running to the door
Progressive aspect (be + VBG) — not a participial clause
the man standing there
WHIZ deletion — see WHIZBG
Sources
- biber_1988 — Biber, Douglas (1988) : Variation across Speech and Writing
- pybiber — Brown, David West & Reinhart, Alex (2026) : pybiber — Python package for linguistic feature extraction and Multi-Dimensional Analysis
Notes
D2 loading .39. Biber counted these separately from WHIZ deletions (WHIZBG).