I was studying the differences between particles and gerunds last night (for my Na'vi studies lol) and got a little stuck.
But i found it helpful to change a verb from a gerund or participle back into its infinitive form to distinguish its role in the sentence and differentiate the two from each other since they can look identical in spelling in English but have very different functions (a gerund having more limited function). This also helps me more explicitly see tense in participles and see the "agent" nature of a gerund. My thought process went a little like this:
"I like jogging." -> example of a gerund
It wouldnt make sense to say "I like jog" because the verb is in the infinitive and English doesnt use infinitives as agents like this. So I see how the "-ing" suffix is a gerund forming morpheme to make a noun out of the verb by changing the syntatic function of the verb. The infinitive verb is now a noun that describes the "ability" to do that verb or the general essence of that verb. Ability and essence are nouns. This is specifically a gerund and not a participle because the "-ing" suffix on the verb "jog" is not used to change the verb into an adverb to describe a verb nor an adjective to describe a noun, nor is it nominalizing a clause; its standing on its own as the agent of the predicate, transitive verb "like".
"The jogging athlete passes the baton." <- example of a participle
Here the verb "jog" is used as an adjective to describe the subject noun "athlete". It wouldnt make sense to use the infinitive of the verb to describe the noun because the infinitive form doesnt function as an attributing adjectve this way in English. The morpheme "-ing" is added to the verb to turn it into an adjective that syntatically functions to describe the ergative noun.
This is specifically a participle and not a gerund because a participle forming morpheme is used to syntatically change the verb's function to an adjective that describes the ergative noun and participles have this verb changing ability. Participles can also syntatically change verbs into nouns and adverbs. Gerunds exclusively function to turn verbs into agent nouns, and the verb in this sentence isnt functioning as an agent noun of the predicate verb "passes".
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I hope this is an accurate thought process to understanding these terms lol.
