Let's try a slightly different one: "I love to walk." What part of speech is "to walk."
If in either case you said "verb," think again. Sometimes a verb isn't a verb. Sometimes it's a different part of speech entirely. Welcome to the wonderful world of the "verbal" ? a form of a verb used as a noun, adjective or adverb. Don't feel bad if you hadn't heard of verbals, because chances are that you have heard of the three types of verbals: gerunds, participles and infinitives. In the sentence, "Walking is great exercise," the word "walking" is actually a noun. And anytime a form of a verb is acting as a noun and (this is a big and) ends in "ing," well, you've got yourself a gerund.
And this is a great example of how a word we think of as a verb can actually be the subject of a sentence. In our example sentence, the subject, which is a noun, is "walking." The verb is "is." There. Now that wasn't so bad was it? Aren't you glad you kept reading despite your natural impulse to turn the page the minute you saw the word "gerund"? Good. Then we're ready to move on to our second familiar-yet-nonethelessalienating term, "participle." Look at that second example. "Walking down the street, I saw a lot of trees."
What's the subject of that sentence? It's "I." And what's the verb? It's "saw." So how are we to understand the role of "walking" in this whole mess? With the word "participle."
Like gerunds, some participles end in "ing." But participles can also end in "en" or "ed."
"Driven by greed, Tom cooked the books." Here, "driven" is a participle.
"Emboldened by Tom's actions, Sue began embezzling." Here, "emboldened" is a participle.
Not that both of these words can function as verbs when they're accompanied by auxiliaries. "I have driven to the store." "I have emboldened the enemy."
