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Is “ferrying” in the following passage a gerund or a present participle?

In March 2016, Zipline, a U.S. startup partnered with the Rwandan government to launch the world’s first commercial drone delivery service, ferrying vital medical supplies to far-flung hospitals by air. Since October of that year, the company has dispatched more than 7,000 units of blood products to 21 hospitals, … (TIME, May 31, 2018; https://time.com/longform/ziplines-drones-are-saving-lives/ )

If it is a participle, I think, it will make up a reduced participle clause, with the subject being “the world’s first commercial drone delivery service”. In which case, the clause may be rewritten as “which ferries vital medical supplies …”; present tense “ferries” is made necessary by the next sentence saying the service is still going on; however, tense disagreement between “ferries” and the main clause verb “partnered” concerns me.

Or, “ferrying” is a gerund?

Yukio
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    The writer wrote ferrying precisely to avoid which ferries, which is heavy. and breaks up the flow of the sentence. The writer also could have said: to ferry vital medical supplies to[wherever]. You can always form sentences from this participles: Ferrying medical supplies to x is dangerous. – Lambie Feb 14 '22 at 21:24
  • Ferrying in your quote acts as a participle verb, not a gerundy noun. – Yosef Baskin Feb 14 '22 at 22:38
  • Two sentences with the same subject can be combined by reducing one sentence to a participle clause. So: *Zipline partnered with the Rwandan government to launch [a] drone delivery service.* + *Zipline ferried vital medical supplies to far-flung hospitals by air.* = *Zipline partnered with the Rwandan government to launch [a] drone delivery service, ferrying vital medical supplies to far-flung hospitals by air.* (Ferrying is a participle.) – Tinfoil Hat Feb 15 '22 at 00:54
  • It does not matter what it is. The fact is that it avoids which ferries. – Lambie Feb 15 '22 at 01:00
  • @Lambie: No — there is no nonrestrictive reduced relative clause involved here. – Tinfoil Hat Feb 15 '22 at 02:37
  • "Ferrying" is a present participle. Ferrying vital medical supplies to far-flung hospitals by air is certainly an adjunct, though I’m not sure how to describe the subtype of adjunct that it is. – BillJ Feb 15 '22 at 08:32
  • @TinfoilHat I really dislike it when people ascribe things to me I did not say. I said the participle avoids using "which will ferry". Forgot the will. OR Zipline, a U.S. startup partnered with the Rwandan government to launch the world’s first commercial drone delivery service and ferry* vital medical supplies to far-flung hospitals by air.* Also, a to-infinitive would not work, I was mistaken. – Lambie Feb 15 '22 at 15:34
  • Certainly it is a participial verb form: it ends in the -ing suffix. It's transitive because it has a direct object, and it's missing a subject. It can't be a gerund, though, because it's not acting like a noun -- it's not a subject or object -- but rather like an extra verb with extra information, arranged neatly in a verb phrase. And the identity of the missing subject is a bit unclear -- it could be the startup, the Rwandan government, or the service that was delivering stuff, or some combination. Good place for a participle with an ambiguous subject. – John Lawler Feb 15 '22 at 16:01

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