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When they had made themselves comfortable, a stranger appeared looking very angry.

May you help me why it uses looking in the sentence?

  1. Why not use 'looked'?
  2. How to comprehend the word 'looking'?
ColleenV
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Y. zeng
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1 Answers1

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In the cited example, looking very angry is a participle clause - a type of adverbial clause based on a continuous (-ing) or past tense (-ed) verb form.

That link above gives the following useful example of the difference between a present participle (-ing) form and a past participle (-ed) form...

1: Shouting loudly, Peter walked home. [Peter was shouting]
2: Shouted at loudly, Peter walked home. [Someone was shouting at Peter]

...where in example #2 the participial verb is passive. But I can't see any way to "passivize" OP's exact example using the past participle looked. It just doesn't work. But I can offer this contrasting pair if it helps...

3: The stranger sat down, watching closely [The stranger was the one paying attention]
4: The stranger sat down, watched closely [Unnamed others were watching the stranger]

FumbleFingers
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  • Can you tell me what the meaning of the word 'OP's' is? – Y. zeng Feb 21 '19 at 14:13
  • That would be *you* - the "Original Poster" (the person who posted the question). In other contexts on SE ("Stack Exchange") sites we use the abbreviation to refer to "Original Post" (the question itself). As you can probably imagine, we often need to refer to these, so the abbreviations are often used by people who have been here a long time. – FumbleFingers Feb 21 '19 at 14:15
  • Hello, I want to express that: When they had made themselves comfortable, a stranger appeared looking very angry. should be used looked, for I imagine that When they had made themselves comfortable, a stranger appeared who I looked was very angry.. – Y. zeng May 02 '21 at 06:05
  • And what you talked about is verb, but look is not only a verb, is but also a conjunctive verb. May you help analysis the sentence again? – Y. zeng May 02 '21 at 06:22
  • In your context, appeared = came, arrived. And in He arrived, looking angry, the highlighted continuous participle is an adverbial** element defining *how* he arrived (He arrived quickly, He arrived wearing a suit, He arrived late...). – FumbleFingers May 02 '21 at 14:43