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Take a look on this sentence.

Today 71 years ago US dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima killing over 1000000

Why in this sentence it uses killing, is it a noun and "Hiroshima killing over 1000000" is the noun phrase complement for this sentence?

J.R.
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TomSawyer
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1 Answers1

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A noun phrase complement is something that is linked to a noun using the verb be, for example:

Time is a great healer.

time is the subject and a great healer is the noun phrase complement.

Looking at your sentence, there is no be, so killing over 1000000 is not a noun phrase complement.

killing over 100000 is actually a participle clause. It is nonessential information, and should really be separated from the main clause with a comma:

Today 71 years ago US dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, killing over 1000000

JavaLatte
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    +1 . .. I commend to your attention the Cambridge Grammar's term supplement, which avoids suggesting that the information provided in these syntactically subordinate adjuncts is unimportant. – StoneyB on hiatus Aug 09 '16 at 10:25
  • I'm wondering hows about this stentence: I'm the one seeing the rainbow ,Here are 13 examples of Donald Trumps being racist so what are the role of seeing and being here? Is it a participle clause or noun phase? – TomSawyer Aug 19 '16 at 03:39
  • Gerunds act like nouns, participles act like adjectives. "I am the one [that is] seeing the rainbow" - participle, because it is following an omitted is, so it must be adjectival. "Here are 13 examples of Donald Trump's being racist" - gerund, because "Trump's" is a possessive, so it must be followed by a noun. Here is a similar question: http://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/19041/im-used-to-him-being-away-or-im-used-to-his-being-away – JavaLatte Aug 19 '16 at 11:33