Talk:Participle

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1 Nothing about participles in other languages?
2 Participles Versus Derived Adjectives
3 Explaining changes
4 Present participle in Spanish
5 About the opening line
6 Latin passive future participle
7 Stupidest article ever
8 Please bring all the documents required.
9 Interlingua
10 Lingo

[edit] Nothing about participles in other languages?

Why is there nothing yet about participles in other languages? (Rhetorical question, but answer if the Muse moves you.) Michael Hardy 03:47, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Oh ... I see Latin is mentioned. That's at least a start. Michael Hardy 03:50, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't think the recently added second sentence of the first paragraph is helpful. It really doesn't summarize the article, it basically duplicates the text immediately beneath it. At the least, should it not be qualified with "In English..."? Fleminra 09:06, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Participles Versus Derived Adjectives

'A few irregular verbs have two non-synonymous past participles: One may say "The ship has sunk" or "The divers found a sunken ship."'

"Sunken" is not a past participle. It's an adjective identical in form to the older past participle of "sink." You can say "the sunk ship" or "the sunken ship," but you can only say "the ship has sunk," because "the ship has sunken" is incorrect.

In fact, there are no non-synonymous pairs of past participles ("sneaked" and "snuck", "dreamed" and "dreamt" --> same meanings). If no one disagrees in the next few days or so, i'll make the edit myself. - JRiddy 12/01/05

I completely agree. Ruakh 03:41, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Explaining changes

Wherever this article was copied from was a poor source. No mention that the participles are perfect and imperfect (it's actually misleading to call the perfect participle "past" because a/ it's used in the perfect tense -- a present tense and b/ it's used adjectivally to describe objects that are very much present. The stuff about "passive" was written by someone who simply didn't think about the perfect tense. It would have been better to say that the perfect participle is used in the passive, rather than suggesting it's in itself passive, which it isn't. The stuff about "sunk" and "sunken" is nonsense and needs deleting as per the discussion above. 203.206.87.165 05:27, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Present participle in Spanish

This part is kind of missleading. In Spanish, a participio is a verbal adjective by definition. What's more, Spanish does have a present participle, which is considered as an adjective on its own right. It is called participio presente, ends in -ante, -ente and comes from latin active present participle: e.g. latin amans, -antis gives Spanish amante, "loving (adj), (one) that loves". It is clearly an adjective, and it is always equivalent to a relative clause. It never complements a verb.

On the same page, the past participle (the participio, or more properly participio pasado) is also an adjective (regular endings are -ado, -ido, but there are irregular forms too, such as hecho). This one comes from latin passive past participle. As in English, it is also used to form perfect tenses.

On the other hand, the gerundio (ending in -ando, -endo) is never used as an adjective, an logically is not considered as such. This form is used only to make continuous/progressive tenses, so it is always connected to a verb: that's why it is considered as a verbal adverb in Spanish.

The mistake seems to arise from the fact that both present participle and gerundio just happen to be translated by an -ing form in English: "a loving man" gives un hombre amante, but "she is singing" gives ella está cantando. Note that the English term gerund refers to a -ing form acting as a noun; in Spanish that role is played by the infinitive: English gerund "I like writting" translates into Spanish as Me gusta escribir --Xavier 22:22, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I feel like much of what you've said is the same as what's in the article, and some of what you said is mistaken:

"In Spanish, a participio is a verbal adjective by definition." True, and the article says that.
"What's more, Spanish does have a present participle, which is considered as an adjective on its own right. [...]" According to es:Participio, Spanish has no participio presente. It's true that there are words (including amante - which, however, is primarily a noun) that descend from Latin's present participle, but these are not part of the conjugation of the verb, and not every verb has one. They are nouns and adjectives derived from verbs, not verbal nouns nor verbal adjectives nor yet participles.
"On the same page, the past participle [...] is also an adjective [...]" All this paragraph is true, and the article says all of it, except that it doesn't mention the past participle's Latin descent. (I'm not sure the details of its Latin descent are all that important, but if you want to add them, I won't object.)
"On the other hand, the gerundio (ending in -ando, -endo) is never used as an adjective [...]. This form is used only to make continuous/progressive tenses [...]." This is half-true. It is commonly considered an adverb, not an adjective, and unlike the typical Spanish adjective, it doesn't agree in person and number with any noun. However, it is not restricted to the formation of the continuous aspect - I don't know where you could have gotten such a notion - and it is used in many of the same ways as English's present participle. All of the examples at es:Gerundio would be translated to English using the present participle, including the non-continuous "Ya veo a mis hijos viniendo de la escuela," which in English would be "I already see my children coming (home) from school." Granted, the gerundio does have certain uses that English would translate adverbially (for example, es:Plantilla:Esbozo, which is the Spanish equivalent of Template:Stub, contains the sentence "Ampliándolo ayudarás a mejorar Wikipedia," which in English would be "In expanding it, you will help improve Wikipedia"), but many of its uses are what an English-speaker would consider adjectival.
"Note that the English term gerund refers to a -ing form acting as a noun [...]" This is true, but I'm sorry, I don't see the relevance. :-/

Ruakh 01:45, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

My view is that in both English and Spanish, trying to distinguish a gerund and a present participle is a false distinction - they are the same. So the only possible distinctions are as parts of speech by analogy with other languages. But other languages' grammar can only give suggestions. --164.36.38.240 18:26, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

In English, there's certainly a difference: in "walking is fun," walking is clearly a noun (and hence gerund), while "walking fish are cool," it's clearly an adjective (and hence participle). There are some cases where the distinction is very relevant — "What's walking?" could be asking either "What does walking mean?" (gerund) or "What thing/item/animal/etc. that is walking?" (participle). There are also some cases where it's very not — "I stopped walking" (participle) and "I stopped my walking" (gerund) are really equivalent — but that doesn't make the entire distinction meaningless. Ruakh 00:38, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] About the opening line

In the opening line of the article it states that a participle is a "verbal adjective". Since a participle is an inflected form of a verb that has the function of an adjective, wouldn't it be more correct to call it a "adjectival verb"? Calling it a "verbal adjective" seems to imply that a participle is actually an adjective in form that is functioning as a verb, but this is not the case. In a sentence like "The walking dog", "walking" is a verb in form, but is has the function of an adjective. Does anyone agree with this? Evan Manning 23:07, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but I disagree: in "the walking dog," "walking" is an adjective modifying "dog." It's inflected from a verb — hence verbal adjective — but it's still an adjective. (Even if you convinced me, it wouldn't matter; the term is quite standard, and it's not really an encyclopedia's place to abandon it.) Ruakh 00:25, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Latin passive future participle

By my reading of my grammar texts, Latin doesn't really have a fully functional passive future participle. The gerundive can be used as one in every case but the nominative - which is what the example on this page shows! Nominative 'educandus' can mean 'worthy of being taught' or 'able to be taught' but never 'about to be taught'; accusative 'educandum' could mean 'about to be taught' but would be misleading amongst the other nominatives in the list.

Not entirely clear whether the best thing to do is take the future passive out of the list for more explanation, leave it as is (technically incorrect but usefully explanatory) or just use a different case for that one example.

Mikolaj 04:13, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Latin has not got a future passive participle, in fact educandus means to be accultured, eudcated. To express the idea of about to be eucated meaning that will be educated the latins would use a passive future infinite with the subject expressed.--Philx 02:07, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Sources that confirm gerundive use as either expressing obligation or as participle, depending on context:

Betts 1986 states:

"The gerundive [...] has three uses: (a) As an attribute adjective with the sense of able to be, worthy of being [...] (b) As a predicative adjective with the same basic sense, except that it always expresses the idea of necessity [...] This use involves part of sum [...] (c) In this remaining use the gerundive has the sense of a present or future passive participle, but, with one exception, it is only employed in the same type of grammatical contexts as the gerund. [...]"

Mikolaj 06:25, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stupidest article ever

I come here, see some little things that are wrong, try2fix... then I come to notice more and more things that are wrong and ultimately i don't think it can be fixed. 'participle' is what you call a verb when you use it attributively somewhere, other than a VP C-commanded by a form of the verb 'be' where it belongs in predicative use... (and it is the verb 'be'. and in italian, instead of saying 'the passengers have arrived', you say 'the passengers are arrived'... and then you can say, 'the arrived passengers'... like in english, you say 'the words have been spoken', and then you can say, 'the spoken words' (spoken is the past participle, not the past tense, the past tense being 'spoke' as in 'i spoke the words'... you get the forrm of the participle when C-commanded by 'be'))

dunno why i wrote that. i want to fix the article, but i don't even know what to fix...

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.19.73.110 (talk • contribs).

I think that the article is mostly correct, and your comments do not help me see what you consider to be wrong in the article. Can you point out a specific statement in the article that, in your estimation, is not correct, and explain why? —Ruakh_TALK 23:02, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please bring all the documents required.

This example doesn't mean what you think it should. It turns out that, in English, left-branching structures go to the left of the noun, and right-branching structures go to the right. Now, most structures in English are left-branching, and the single-word APs which include 'green' as in 'the green apple' are not exceptional in this regard. Participles are /not/ adjectives, but single-word participle verb phrases are also considered left-branching, as in "the required documents". But what about "the documents required"?

It turns out that you are permitted to randomly delete certain words from your sentences. This is one example- 'the documents required' is an ellided version of 'the documents [that PRO are required]' (actually, i'm not sure... is that really PRO, or is it a trace?)

Now, I know you probably aren't going to take an 'it's ellided' argument seriously, especially after the whole 'better than [she is good]' debacle. But try to say 'the that are required documents'... I'm guessing you had to try to make that-are-required into a single word to fit it in to the left of the noun. The head of the relative clause, [that PRO are required], is of course 'that', making the structure right-branching and belonging on the right.

Here's an interesting participle verb phrase that will nicely illustrate my point about what goes to the left and what goes to the right- you can say 'the beautifully dancing man', or you can say 'the man dancing beautifully'. Or you could, you know, say 'the man which is beautifully dancing'... thus 'the man beautifully dancing'... though that last one is a stretch, about as much of a stretch as 'the documents required'.

Here's the cliffs notes version, which doesn't much out this time. Head comes last -> put to the left. Head comes first -> put to the right.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.19.73.110 (talk • contribs).

It's not really just in English that left-branching structures go to the left and right-branching ones to the right. OTOH, I've always seen your example sentence as containing an ellided [which is], as in please bring all the documents [which are] required. Wtrmute 19:00, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

The article does not suggest any particular analysis. It points out a simple observation about how the surface position of participles is sometimes different from that of ordinary adjectives: "the documents required, the difficulties encountered" vs "*the documents important, *the difficulties major". Does anyone think that this needs to be modified in this article? CapnPrep 21:50, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Interlingua

I removed the Interlingua section. I think auxlangs and conlangs have no place in linguistic articles, unless they serve a very specific illustrational purpose, which in this case there wasn't at all. Jalwikip (talk) 09:29, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Lingo

This article uses far too much lingo, and it is impossible for anyone who is not knowledgable in linguistics to understand. Could someone who has worked on this article make it more accessible for non English graduates? Thanks --liquidGhoul (talk) 15:07, 10 May 2008 (UTC)