The temporal meaning of participle I.

Participle I indefinite active of durative verbs expresses an action simultaneous with the action expressed by the finite verb:

Knowing him well, I can understand why he behaves so.

Participle I indefinite active of terminative verbs and verbs of sense perception may express both simultaneousness and priority:

Coming down slowly she counted the steps. (simultaneousness)

Seeing her for the first time he was struck by her beauty. (simultaneousness)

Coming into the room she sat down near me. (priority)

Seeing us he turned away quickly. (priority)

To stress simultaneousness the conjunctions when and while are used:

When (while) reading the letter she smiled happily.

Participle I indefinite passive may also express simultaneousness and priority:

Being asked this question he only shrugged his shoulders. (priority)

Being examined carefully by the doctor she felt nervous. (simultaneousness)

Participle I perfect active and passive always expresses priority:

Having learned the news he left.

Having been informed of their arrival, we decided to visit them.

The functions of participle I.

Participle I may have different syntactic functions; it is used as:

An attribute

The boys playing football made a lot of noise.

The question being discussed now is of no interest to me.

Note 1. Participle I perfect is never used in the function of an attribute. To translate the Russian perfective participle an attributive clause must be used:

Я не знаю человека, принесшего записку.

I don't know the man who has brought the message.

Note 2. Some participles I used attributively and predicatively have practically turned into adjectives. They can be modified by the adverbs too, very, extremely, etc.:

This story is too boring to listen to.

R.A.Close gives a list of such participles: amazing, amusing, astonishing, charming, comforting, disturbing, embarrassing, exciting, frightening, lasting, pleasing, shocking, and some others.

An adverbial modifier of

Time

Reaching the bank he lay down on the warm sand.

Cause

Finding nobody in he went away.

Note. Participle I of the verb to be is always an adverbial modifier of cause:

Being a clever boy, he understood everything.

To express a temporal meaning when + noun or a clause must be used: When a boy, When he was a boy…

Comparison

He stopped as if not knowing how to continue his speech.

Concession

Though understanding nothing, he pretended to be listening carefully.

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