counting the seconds case Hello, everybody! It appears that "counting" in the sentence "The old clock kept ticking on the mantelpiece, as if counting the seconds left before the coming of daylight". is Participle I (Present Participle). My book says, "In the function of adverbial modifiers the participle can be preceded by conjunctions. The conjunction determines the type of the adverbial modifier." That means that is this sentence as we have the conjunction "as if " this is Participle I (Present Participle) which functions as adverbial modifier of comparison. I still don't understand what is the difference between gerun and Present Participle...