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Are the two points right about the structure and meaning following sentence: "Many new areas of inquiry gaining momentum in twenty-first-century psychology span traditional subfields and disciplines" (Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Fredrickson, B., Loftus, G. R., & Lutz, C. (2014). Introduction to psychology. Cengage Learning.)

  1. It could be rephrased like "Many new areas of inquiry (which are) gaining momentum...
  2. Span is the verb (meaning bridge)
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  1. Yes, if it were “, which are...”
  2. Sort of. It is the verb of the predicate, but “gaining” is also a verb acting as an adjective (a participle).
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  • thank you so much. Do you mean it needs a comma by "if it were “, which are...”? – user52346 Jan 22 at 5:46
  • Gaining is part of the very complex subject of this sentence, not the verb. Also, this sounds like a homework question. – Valkor Jan 22 at 13:16
  • “gaining” is not part of the predicate, but it is a verb acting as an adjective (a participle). – maxbear123 Jan 22 at 13:35
  • @maxbear123 Do you mean it's an adjective here? would you please explain more? how do you rephrase the sentence to make it easier to understand the grammatical role of gaining? – user52346 Jan 22 at 23:07
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    @user52346 "gaining" acts as an adjective because it modifies momentum (a noun), by telling you what type of momentum it is (i.e. the increasing type). The most basic part of the subject is "areas" the rest all modifies this (the whole subject is "Many new areas of inquiry gaining momentum in twenty-first-century psychology"). Also, just an FYI, going through each piece of a sentence part by part is called "parsing". – maxbear123 Jan 22 at 23:47

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