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Well you are wrong -- it's not even referring to Akpu, it's the action taken by Babu.
Consider 'I saw Babu exhorting the irritated Akpu on the virtues of ChatGPT' -- 'irritated' is an adjective referring to Akpu, whereas in "I saw Babu punch Akpu", 'punch' is clearly a verb. Your original sentence is like the latter, not the former.
You seem to be saying that, if a participle is active, then it must be treated exclusively as a verb, with no trace of adjective nature. I reject that assertion.
I'm saying that "exhorted" is not a participle in this case at all -- why would it be? (other than 'a robot told me')
We're talking about "exhorting", not "exhorted".
Here are some sentence diagrams.
Just because it ends in 'ing' doesn't mean it's a participle acting as an adverb; an example of this (which I think the LLM was reaching for, and maybe you) would be "a racing car".
Can you see how "racing" is describing the type of car (adjective) while "exhorting" is not saying anything about Babulal? It's a verb in this sentence; why wouldn't it be?
You're making this discussion more difficult by mixing up (1) adjectives and adverbs and (2) Akpu and Babulal.
In the sentence "I heard Akpu exhorting Babulal to use ChatGPT", "exhorting" is (1) an adjective that modifies "Akpu" and (2) a verb that takes "Akpu" as its subject and "Babulal" as its object, simultaneously. That's the definition of what a participle is.
In exactly the same fashion, in the sentence "I heard Akpu's exhorting Babulal to use ChatGPT", "exhorting" is (1) a noun that is (a) the object of "heard" and (b) modified by "Akpu's" and (2) a verb that takes Babulal as its object, simultaneously. That's the definition of what a gerund is.
I fail to see how this doesn't make sense to you.
(In the phrase "the racing car looks fast but isn't going anywhere", I'm tempted to think that "racing" actually is a gerund, not a participle—i. e., "the car made for racing", similar to "the cake icing" = "the icing made for cake".)
It is totally not doing that though -- how does it modify Akpu (or Babulal), like the participle "racing" in racing car? It doesn't -- it's an action that Akpu is taking a verb. Same as if Akpu is punching Babulal or anything else. "Racing car" is a type of car -- "exhorting" is a thing that Akpu is doing.
This may be your problem -- that is not true. A participle can act as a verb or an adjective, probably not both at once: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/participle/
I don't think I see the "I saw X Y-ing Z" pattern on that page, but a simpler one will do:
"The bird is singing outside my window" -- 'singing' is very clearly doing verb work here.
vs.
"The singing bird is outside my window." -- this has verb-y aspects, since the bird is not always a singing bird (unlike a racing car) -- but it's still doing the adjective job of describing the current state of the bird.
(I'm pretty sure you are correct that 'exhorting' in your second sentence is a gerund, but a gerund really is not a verb in any sense; it acts as a noun. "hiking, swimming, exhorting" are names for those activities; things, not actions.)
Your definitions of parts of speech seem non-standard to me; anyways, what did you think was wrong with the initial sentence, lol? You got us into this mess.
This argument has exhausted my reserve of charity, so I will not participate further in it.
Suit yourself.
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