Confused about Participles

Jadyndar · Post by **Jadyndar** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 8:09 pm

In the development of my present conlang, I have been studying the various parts of grammar. I've understood all I've read - except for participles. In a Sindarin course I printed out, their meanings seem to suggest a function similar to the perfect tenses, yet in some way wholly different. Seeing as there are a number of linguistically-learned people here (the Zompist not least, of course), I hope one or more of you can help me understand their purpose/function.

Soap · Post by **Soap** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 8:18 pm

A participle is a noun that isn't an actual permanent thing, but just an entity created by the verb. e.g. "the one who is judging right now". Some languages express these as if they were regular nouns, some treat them as verb forms. English does neither, we have to use a phrase.

FFF · Post by **FFF** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 8:25 pm

Mercator wrote:A participle is a noun that isn't an actual permanent thing, but just an entity created by the verb. e.g. "the one who is judging right now". Some languages express these as if they were regular nouns, some treat them as verb forms. English does neither, we have to use a phrase.

Maybe I'm not understanding you, but I've always heard that participles are adjectives formed from verbs that still retain some qualities of verbs, such as tense.

Soap · Post by **Soap** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 8:32 pm

I've done some Google searching and I think I might have been wrong there. What I think I mean is just phrases like "judging right now" as in "The boy, judging by what he could see right now, decided he wouldn't be able to make the jump". I could be wrong though.

insumaro · Post by **insumaro** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 8:33 pm

I wouldn't say that's a participle, Merc, though the -ing suffix is found in participles. A participle is basically a verb turned into an adjective.

For example:
Look at the man sing. Look at the singing man.

In the first sentance, "sing" is a verb.
In the second sentance, "singing" is an adjective describing "man," so because it was formed from a verb, it's a participle.

You can have both present and past participles, too.

the parking driver present participle
the parked car past participle

In Spanish, the distinction is a little bit more obvious.

Com? la cena. I ate the dinner.
La cena comida mat? el presidente. The eaten dinner killed the president.

I hope that made a smidgeon of sense.

Jadyndar · Post by **Jadyndar** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 8:40 pm

Yes, Pentekonter, that made plenty of sense. Unfortunately, I still don't understand how one could use a participle at the head of a clause, which the Sindarin course hinted at - consider the example "Seeing as there are..." from my first post. Is that a participle, or is it really something else?[/i]

Shm Jay · Post by **Shm Jay** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 8:49 pm

Yes it is.

In English, there are two types of words ending in -ing: present participles and gerunds. A gerund is a verbal noun. If you can replace the -ing word with "to [infinitive]" and it makes sense, you have a gerund. If not, you have a participle.

"Seeing as there are a number of linguistically-learned people here (the Zompist not least, of course)"

"To see as there..." makes no sense.

Another way of looking at it is that in the word "seeing" you are talking about yourself: you are the one who is doing the seeing. Therefore it is a participle.

insumaro · Post by **insumaro** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 8:53 pm

It's a pretty fuzzy topic, IMO, but I'd say that "seeing" in that sense would be a straight out verb, because it doesn't function of an adjective.

dictionary.com wrote: A form of a verb that in some languages, such as English, can function independently as an adjective, as the past participle baked in We had some baked beans, and is used with an auxiliary verb to indicate tense, aspect, or voice, as the past participle baked in the passive sentence The beans were baked too long.

Usage Note: Participial phrases such as walking down the street or having finished her homework are commonly used in English to modify nouns or pronouns, but care must be taken in incorporating such phrases into sentences. Readers will ordinarily associate a participle with the noun, noun phrase, or pronoun adjacent to it, and misplacement may produce comic effects as in He watched his horse take a turn around the track carrying a racing sheet under his arm. A correctly placed participial phrase leaves no doubt about what is being modified: Sitting at her desk, Jane read the letter carefully. ?Another pitfall in using participial phrases is illustrated in the following sentence: Turning the corner, the view was quite different. Grammarians would say that such a sentence contains a ?dangling participle? because there is no noun or pronoun in the sentence that the participial phrase could logically modify. Moving the phrase will not solve the problem (as it would in the sentence about the horse with a racing sheet). To avoid distracting the reader, it would be better to recast the sentence as When we turned the corner, the view was quite different or Turning the corner, we had a different view. ?A number of expressions originally derived from participles have become prepositions, and these may be used to introduce phrases that are not associated with the immediately adjacent noun phrase. Such expressions include concerning, considering, failing, granting, judging by, and speaking of. Thus one may write without fear of criticism Speaking of politics, the elections have been postponed or Considering the hour, it is surprising that he arrived at all.

Okay, maybe it's not a straight out verb, but instead a participial phrase. Damn, I told you 'twas fuzzy.

ing · Post by **ing** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 8:55 pm

There are three types of words that end in -ing in English.

The third is a 100% genuine noun that is derived from a verb. (c.f. "building" in "we went inside the building.")

Mecislau · Post by **Mecislau** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 9:00 pm

Ingolemo wrote:There are three types of words that end in -ing in English.

The third is a 100% genuine noun that is derived from a verb. (c.f. "building" in "we went inside the building.")

Well, I guess you mean a gerund?

And is "building" really a verbal noun? Or is it coincedince that it has the -ing ending?

Jadyndar · Post by **Jadyndar** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 9:03 pm

Yeah, that still makes two when you consider the definition of a gerund; nice try, though.

OK, thanks for the participial phrase clarification, Shm Jay and Pente (acceptable shorthand?). It's back to the conlang lab for me now...

Mecislau · Post by **Mecislau** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 9:06 pm

woodb3kmaster wrote:Yeah, that still makes two when you consider the definition of a gerund; nice try, though.

I'd say that there are three, though:

1. The Participle (the singing people)
2. The Gerund (the people's singing)
3. The Present Progressive (they are singing)

Shm Jay · Post by **Shm Jay** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 9:09 pm

Maknas wrote:
woodb3kmaster wrote:Yeah, that still makes two when you consider the definition of a gerund; nice try, though.
I'd say that there are three, though:

1. The Participle (the singing people)
2. The Gerund (the people's singing)
3. The Present Progressive (they are singing)

The Present Progressive is composed of the present tense of be + the present participle. So that still makes two.

ing · Post by **ing** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 9:20 pm

The main difference between an English gerund and verbal noun is that although a gerund looks very much like a noun, one can still observe some of the characteristics of the verb such as the taking of a direct object.

A verbal noun, on the other hand, has the morphology of a noun and can do things like receive case endings. The ending -ing isn't the only way to derive a verbal noun, but it is a prominant one.

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Sat Sep 04, 2004 9:24 pm

The term participle is more of a name for a morphological form than a name for a grammatical function. We use participles in at two main ways - as a marker for aspects on verbs, and as a means of deriving an adjective from a verb.

An English verb takes four main forms, or "principal parts" - the present, the past, the past participle, and the present participle. Keep in mind that those are the names of the word forms, not the names of their functions. The past participle is used to add mark the "perfect" aspect on a verb (whatever its semantic tense) and the present participle is used to mark the progressive aspect (again, regardless of semantic tense). Both participles are also used to derive adjectives from verbs, in which case they indicate the tense (past or present) of the verb the adjective is formed from.

Examples as adjectives...
past participle: "The broken stick"
present participle: "The breaking stick"

Examples as verbs...
past participle: "The stick has/had broken"
present participle: "The stick is/was breaking"

Edit: a gerund (verbal noun) is another use for the present participle, e.g. "seeing is believing"

Edit 2: these examples apply only to English. Other languages that have "participles" are probably using a similar mapping of morphology to semantics, but a given language need not; it might use a very different morphology system for the same meanings.

pharazon · Post by **pharazon** » Sun Sep 05, 2004 7:10 am

Radius Solis wrote:The past participle is used to add mark the "perfect" aspect on a verb (whatever its semantic tense) and the present participle is used to mark the progressive aspect (again, regardless of semantic tense). Both participles are also used to derive adjectives from verbs, in which case they indicate the tense (past or present) of the verb the adjective is formed from.

Don't forgot that in English the present participle has active voice and the past participle passive (or either can be middle, as in your examples). Also, they aren't limited to past and present: Latin, for example, has future participles, both active and passive:

Cum muliere cantātūrā collocūtus sum - I spoke with the woman who was to sing (lit. 'woman going-to-sing')

The future passive participle actually has the meaning of "must be" or "should be": Carthagō delenda est 'Carthage must be destroyed' (I'll leave it to you to figure out what 'Amanda' means).

Latin can do cool stuff with participial clauses, which could easily be snuck into a conlang in some form:

Rex corōnātus ē soliō cōnsurrexit - After he was crowned, the king rose from his throne (more literally, 'The king crowned, he...')
Lībrīs lectīs fructus sum - I enjoyed the books I read ('I enjoyed the read books'; ā mē 'by me' could be added for clarity/emphasis)
Amīcīs lūdientibus Marcus deambulāre discrevit - Marcus decided to go for a walk as his friends played ('His friends playing, ...')
Fratre abitūrō pernam computāvī - Because my brother was going to leave, I calculated a ham ('[My] brother going-to-leave, ...')

gach · Post by **gach** » Sun Sep 05, 2004 8:07 am

The voice distinction of participles is very handy. Look for example the micro system of four of the participles of Finnish. The system has two axels: perfect ~ present and active ~ passive.
per. active
laulanut tytt?, the girl who has sang
per. passive
laulettu laulu, the song that was sang
pre. active
laulava tytt?, singing girl
pre. passive
laulettava laulu, the song that is sang/the song to be sang
The distinction is about wether the participle modifies an agent (active) or a patient (passive).

There are also other participles not mentioned here. For example the fifth participle of Finnish, so called agent pariciple. It means "done by someone".
laula-ma-ni laulu
sing-agent.part-1sg.poss song, "the song sang by me"
tyt?-n laula-ma laulu
girl-gen. sing-agent.part song, "the song sang by a/the girl"
It naturally needs its agent to be shown. If the agent is a personal pronoun it's done by a possessive suffix, else by the agent in genetive case. You see that the name "agent participle" isn't the best choise for this inflection because its meaning is always passive and it thus modifies the patient, not the agent.

Another curious distinction in participles is negation. Eg. Udmurt makes this distinction in its participle system. It has also the perfect ~ present distinction so we have again a neat two way micro system.
per. pos.
kyrdźa-m ky?nomurt, the woman who has sang
per. neg.
kyrdźa-mte ky?nomurt, the woman who hasn't sang
pre. pos.
kyrdźa-ś ky?nomurt, the singing woman
pre. neg.
kyrdźa-śtem ky?nomurt, the woman who doesn't sing

There are also many structures where participles are used mot as adjectives but verbs. Some English anf Latin ones have been mentioned already. Also Finnish has these.
Laule-ttu-a-ni l?hd-i-n.
sing-per.pass.part-partitive-sg1.poss leave-past-sg1, "I feft after I had sang."
Tied?-n h?ne-n men-nee-n.
know-sg1 he/she-gen go-per.act.part-gen, "I know that he/she has gone."

Noriega · Post by **Noriega** » Wed Sep 08, 2004 7:24 am

Arabic also have participles, in this case it's active and passive. Some of the forms eventually become nouns, with plural forms and the normal case conjugation:
k?tib actually means "(is) writing", but it also means "writer" with the plural kutt?b.
Likewise, "written" is makt?b, and it also means "letter", then with plural mak?tibu.

But the normal use for participles is this:

huwa r?kibun HiS?nan
he (is) riding.nom.indef horse.acc.indef
He's riding a horse

al-HiS?nu mark?bun
def.horse.nom (is) ridden.nom.indef
The horse is ridden

'an? k?tibun makt?ban
I (am) writing.nom.indef letter.acc.indef
I am writing a letter

al-makt?bu makt?bun
def.letter.nom (is) written.nom.indef
The letters is written (or "The letter is a letter"

)

In most verb forms, both the active and passive participle begins with mu-. So eg. muHammad means, more or less, "(the one who is) praised".

---

The use of Finnish participles looks cool

Perfect
puhunut tytt? = the girl who has spoken
puhuttu kieli = the language that was spoken

Present
puhuva tytt? = speaking girl
puhuttava kieli = spoken language

Kyll

gach · Post by **gach** » Wed Sep 08, 2004 9:25 am

Noriega wrote:The use of Finnish participles looks cool
Perfect
puhunut tytt? = the girl who has spoken
puhuttu kieli = the language that was spoken
Present
puhuva tytt? = speaking girl
puhuttava kieli = spoken language

Kyll??

Kyll? vain.
Although puhuttu kieli has the idiomatic meaning of "spoken language".

To complete the ring of compliments I'd say that the use of Swedish present participle as manner adverbial is also cool.
Lille Emil sprang hem gr?tande.
BTW doesn't English work like this too? Noone has ever analysed it to us.

Echobeats · Post by **Echobeats** » Wed Sep 08, 2004 9:41 am

I'd also add that a participle is a type of non-finite verb, and a non-finite verb is one that doesn't possess every grammatical category that verbs are usually marked for in a given language. For example, Latin participles have tense and voice, but not person -- they depend on the person-marking of the main (finite) verb to show whether they refer to Me, You, or Him/Her/It.

Turkish has lots of verb-forms which I would call participles, all of which do different things (I don't know whether the grammar-books call them participles or not, but IMO that's what they are. Judge for yourself).

-en: active participle

İstanbul?a giden tren
Istanbul-to go-en train
"The train going to Istanbul"

-erek: by ...ing

Y?r?yerek geldim
walk-erek come-past.1S
"I came by walking/on foot"

-ince: on ...ing

Eve gelince uyuduk
house-to come-ince sleep-past.1P
"On coming home, we slept"

-erken/-irken: while ...ing

Temizlerken kafamı ?arptım
Clean-erken head-my-acc.def bang-past.1S
"While cleaning, I banged my head"

-ecek: going to

Gelecek adam
come-ecek man
"The man who will come"

-dik + personal possessive ending: past and present passive participle

Yaptığına bak!
yap-dik-in-e bak
do-dik-your-to look
"Look at what you've done!"

-ecek + personal possessive ending: future passive participle

Seveceğim
love-ecek-my
"The one which I'll love"

And, my personal favourite...

-ip: the ending stealer.

If you have two verbs which are identical in every grammatical dimension (tense, aspect, person, number etc.) it's quite annoying to have to repeat all the same endings, only attached to a different stem. In English we connect them with "and" and simply leave the second lot of function words out, thus:

I am going to go home and (I am going to) wash my hair.

Turkish can't do that because its verb modifiers are bound, so instead it gets rid of the "and" and adds the -ip ending to the first verb. This can be done when the only ending is zero (informal 2S imperative) or when there are lots of endings. So:

Bakkala git ve bir kilo s?t al
Grocer-to go and one kilo milk buy

becomes

Bakkala gidip bir kilo s?t al
Grocer-to go-ip one kilo milk buy
"Go to the grocer and buy a kilo of milk"

and

Eve gidecektim ve sa?larımı yıkayacaktım
House-to go-future-past.1S and hair-plural-my-acc.def wash-future-past.1S

becomes
Eve gidip sa?larımı yıkayacaktım
House-to go-ip hair-plural-my-acc.def wash-future-past.1S
"I was going to go home and wash my hair"

I don't quite know whether grammarians count this as a participle, but I noticed that Ancient Greek does exactly the same thing with its aorist participle, with about the same amount of flexibility (e.g. imperatives as well as indicatives). I also don't know whether -ip can encompass such affixes as -ebil- "can" and -meli- "must" -- I'll have to try and find out.

Hope this is helpful and/or interesting.

Yours, Tim.

gach · Post by **gach** » Wed Sep 08, 2004 10:11 am

Interesting. Most of those really are participles. But the -erek and -ince look more like Finnish infinitives to me because they function as adverbials. For example in Y?r?yerek geldim is y?r?yerek, by walking, clearly a manner adverbial. The -ip suffix is also curious but I wouldn't call it a participle because it doesn't work like one. To me it looks like a cliticized conjuction that has become a part of verbal inflection. Its history would be nice to know.

Echobeats · Post by **Echobeats** » Wed Sep 08, 2004 10:26 am

gach wrote:But the -erek and -ince look more like Finnish infinitives to me because they function as adverbials. For example in Y?r?yerek geldim is y?r?yerek, by walking, clearly a manner adverbial.

And gelen is an adjective: that's what the book I have calls them: "-en adjectives", "-dik adjectives"... Does that mean it isn't a participle because it is an adjective? If not, why does y?r?yerek's adverbial usage mean it isn't a participle? And when Latin says "ambulans veni" to mean the same thing, no-one doubts that's a participle. Isn't Turkish just doing the same thing, but using different participles for different semantic relations where Latin only uses one?

And surely -ince is a classic participial usage? "Walking into the room, he looked around." I don't see your complaint.

gach wrote:The -ip suffix is also curious but I wouldn't call it a participle because it doesn't work like one. ... Its history would be nice to know.

That it would. But if that's not how a participle works, how does one work? Participles depend on a head (the main verb or a noun) for the categories it lacks markers for -- that describes -ip to a T.

gach wrote:To me it looks like a cliticized conjuction that has become a part of verbal inflection.

So it's a former conjunction that's been grammaticalised into a participle. What's wrong with that?

Yours, Tim.

gach · Post by **gach** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 3:42 pm

Echobeats wrote:
gach wrote:But the -erek and -ince look more like Finnish infinitives to me because they function as adverbials. For example in Y?r?yerek geldim is y?r?yerek, by walking, clearly a manner adverbial.
And gelen is an adjective: that's what the book I have calls them: "-en adjectives", "-dik adjectives"... Does that mean it isn't a participle because it is an adjective? If not, why does y?r?yerek's adverbial usage mean it isn't a participle? And when Latin says "ambulans veni" to mean the same thing, no-one doubts that's a participle. Isn't Turkish just doing the same thing, but using different participles for different semantic relations where Latin only uses one?

You're right, there's nothing wrong with using participles adverbialily. Also Swedish does this as I said before. The sentence Y?r?yerek geldim is in fact Jag kom g?ende in Swedish where g?ende is a present participle from the verb g?, walk. But I've learned participles as adjectives or nouns associated with the doing of the verb (semanthically "one that is..." to be popular). They can, and are, very well used many ways as adverbials but that's not their main meaning.

And surely -ince is a classic participial usage? "Walking into the room, he looked around." I don't see your complaint.

That can be. I'm not very familiar with that structure so mistakes may happen.

gach wrote:The -ip suffix is also curious but I wouldn't call it a participle because it doesn't work like one. ... Its history would be nice to know.
That it would. But if that's not how a participle works, how does one work? Participles depend on a head (the main verb or a noun) for the categories it lacks markers for -- that describes -ip to a T.

gach wrote:To me it looks like a cliticized conjuction that has become a part of verbal inflection.
So it's a former conjunction that's been grammaticalised into a participle. What's wrong with that?

As above it's a matter of analyse. And semanthic changes like that hypotethical from cliticized verb to a participle are normal. To make a generalization in semanthics almost anything can bacome almost anything. For that -ip, I see no problem why a participle couldn't do that kind of a job. But I wouldn't cassify it as a participle because once again it's not nominal. Of course it might have some other uses that would it more reasonable to analyse it as a participle. It might for example belong somehow functionally to the same group with clear participles. It might be also that despite it hasn't anything in common with participles it's analysed as one because of grammarian tradition. I don't know, I'm not familiar with Turkish verbal morphology and its semanthics. I base my views here solely to the examples you provided. To be honest I'd rather classify the -ip suffix as some kind of a finite inflection in stead. That's because it's used to replace verbal finite endings and thus its also its meaning is finite.

Nuntar · Post by **Nuntar** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 4:30 pm

Echobeats wrote:I'd also add that a participle is a type of non-finite verb, and a non-finite verb is one that doesn't possess every grammatical category that verbs are usually marked for in a given language. For example, Latin participles have tense and voice, but not person -- they depend on the person-marking of the main (finite) verb to show whether they refer to Me, You, or Him/Her/It.

While this is true, it doesn't help much when it comes to distinguishing between participles and other types of non-finite verb, e.g. gerunds. What would you say the distinction is? (I am mindful of the fact that a lot of constructions with participles in some languages are expressed with gerunds instead in my conlang... so I'm making sure I've understood the distinction correctly.)

gach · Post by **gach** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 9:51 am

Ahribar wrote:
Echobeats wrote:I'd also add that a participle is a type of non-finite verb, and a non-finite verb is one that doesn't possess every grammatical category that verbs are usually marked for in a given language. For example, Latin participles have tense and voice, but not person -- they depend on the person-marking of the main (finite) verb to show whether they refer to Me, You, or Him/Her/It.
While this is true, it doesn't help much when it comes to distinguishing between participles and other types of non-finite verb, e.g. gerunds. What would you say the distinction is? (I am mindful of the fact that a lot of constructions with participles in some languages are expressed with gerunds instead in my conlang... so I'm making sure I've understood the distinction correctly.)

I'd say gerund is the name of the doing and participles something associated with the doing.