Mecislau wrote:"Normal" participles, in every language I know of, are subject-absorbing, in that they stand in for a relative clause by replacing the subject and then taking other verbal arguments as normal.
For instance, active participles replace the subject of the relative clause and can take a direct object as an argument. (in the pseudogloss, the brackets represent the dropped/absorbed element in the relative clause)
"The man who sees me"
"The man who [he.NOM] sees me.ACC"
"The seeing me.ACC man"
(with a present active subject-absorbing participle)
Passive participles do the same, except the subject of a passive verb is the logical patient. However, the logical agent may be indicated obliquely, just as in a full relative clause.
"The man who was seen by me"
"The man who [he.NOM] was seen by me.OBL
"The seen by me.OBL man"
(with a past passive subject-absorbing participle)
Now, is it possible to have an active participle that is capable of absorbing its object, while still allowing its subject as an argument? This obviously would only apply to transitive verbs.
"The man whom I see"
"The man who I.NOM see [him.ACC]"
"The I.NOM 'seeing' man"
(with a present active object-absorbing participle)
I can't think of any reason why this couldn't exist, but I've never seen any examples of it*. Do any of you folks know anything?
I think I misinterpreted your term "absorbing" to mean "incorporating", so I didn't show you what you wanted.
What do you mean by "absorbing"? Do you mean the noun the participle modifies is "absorbed" by it? That the head-noun of the relative clause equivalent to the participle, which would be a shared participant between the RC and its matrix clause, and which the RC would modify, is "absorbed" by the participle?
Your examples start with relative clauses; and the participant you say is "absorbed" is the shared participant between the RC and the main clause. In topic-prominent languages the shared participant is usually (maybe always) the topic of the RC; in subject-prominent languages it is usually the subject of the RC.
Then when you re-word it to use a participle instead of a RC, the participle modifies the same noun/nominal that the RC modified.
I would have said the active participle "me-seeing" in "the me-seeing man" incorporates the patient (and object) of the original RC "(the man) sees me". It modifies the subject (and agent) of "see", namely "the man", which is also a participant of the main clause of which "the man who sees me" is part. That's the head-noun of that RC; and also the head of the noun-phrase "the me-seeing man", which is a participant of your unshown main clause.
It seems to me that by "subject-absorbing participle" you mean that the noun the participle modifies -- the head-noun of the RC to which it could be re-worded -- would be the subject of that RC. In other words, that RC has been relativized on its subject; or, its subject has been relativized.
There are many languages in which participants of a relative clause other than its subject can be relativized.
Keenan's and Comrie's "Noun-Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy",
Subject > Direct Object > Indirect Object > Oblique Argument > Genitive (e.g. possessor of subject or object or IO) > Object of Comparison,
shows that there can be relativizaton on other participants.
But I'm not sure whether or not those can be re-worded into a participle.
However, I expect they can (in some languages, if not English). Because:
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In English there are several passive participles that modify the possessor of the patient, or modify the whole of which the possessor was a part, rather than modifying the patient itself.
Example:
"The man's gob was smacked" (a passive independent clause; the patient and subject is "gob".)
"... the man whose gob was smacked" (a noun-phrase in which the passive RC "whose gob was smacked" modifies "the man", the possessor of the patient and the possessor of the subject, "gob". The RC has been relativized on the possessor of its subject-and-patient "gob", rather than on its subject-patient proper. That means that in English everything higher in the hierarchy can also be relativized on; oblique arguments, indirect objects, and direct objects, as well as subjects.)
"... the gobsmacked man" (a noun-phrase in which the passive participle "gobsmacked" modifies "the man", the possessor of the subject-and-patient of the passive participle.)
(I admit I thought of "assfucked" before I thought of "gobsmacked".)
So there's an example of a patient-incorporating passive participle that modifies the whole of which/whom the patient was part, or the possessor of the patient.
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For active participles, the relative clauses to which they could be re-worded, are in the active voice, and have their agents as their subjects. As a general rule, it's harder to relativize on a direct object, (which in the active voice would be a patient), than to relativize on the subject. If you relativize on the DO, that means the RC shares that participant with its main or matrix clause, and "acts as an adjective" modifying the noun in the matrix clause that would be the DO of the RC.
In English it's easy to do this with active RCs; but TTBOMK it's quite awkward, if possible at all, to turn such RCs into participles, without using such suppletive processes as turning "the man whom I see" into "the visible man", if that's not just cheating.
But I think it likely it can be done, in some languages, even though English doesn't seem to be one of them.
English can relativize passive RCs on the genitive modifying the subject, on oblique arguments, on the indirect object, or on the direct object, as well as on the subject.
Presumably, English also can relativize active RCs on those things.
English can make a passive participle modify ("absorb"?) the possessor of its subject/patient; one would expect, therefore, that it could make a passive participle modify an oblique argument or an indirect object, too. (And maybe direct objects. Before anyone objects that English passive clauses don't have direct objects (since the agent is demoted to oblique argument), let me point out that passivized ditransitive verbs might have them, if it's the IO rather than the DO that gets promoted to subject.)
And one would expect that English could make active participles modify ("absorb") all those things too; i.e. oblique arguments, indirect objects, and direct objects.
But I don't know how to do it in English, and I don't even know that it can be done in English.
If it can be, Keenan and Comrie say it should be expected that it's more awkward to do that with an object than with a subject.
However it should also be expected to be more awkward to do it with the possessor of the subject than with the direct object.
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Nevertheless, I would bet that there is some language in which it can be done.