[1] More narrowly, participle has been defined as "a word derived from a verb and used as an adjective, as in a laughing face".
In particular, Greek and Latin participles are inflected for gender, number and case, but also conjugated for tense and voice and can take prepositional and adverbial modifiers.
In English, participles are also associated with periphrastic verb forms (continuous and perfect) and are widely used in adverbial clauses.
The word participle comes from classical Latin participium,[3] from particeps 'sharing, participation', because it shares certain properties of verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
Despite the taxonomical use of "past" and "present" as associated with the aforementioned participles, their respective semantic use can entail any tense, regardless of aspect, depending on how they are structurally combined.
Some languages have extensive participial systems but English has only two participial forms, most commonly termed: Some grammars further distinguish passive participles[10] as often associated with passive voice versus active participles[11] as often associated with e.g. the present progressive tense, but such linguistic distinctions are neither recognized nor employed on a universal basis.
See the examples below: The first sentence is in the past tense (were), but a present participle expresses the progressive aspect (be standing).
The following examples illustrate those concepts: In Old English, past participles of Germanic strong verbs were marked with a ge- prefix, as are most strong and weak past participles in Dutch and German today, and often by a vowel change in the stem.
Modern English past participles derive from these forms (although the ge- prefix, which became y- in Middle English, has now been lost — except in some rare dialects such as the Dorset dialect, where it takes the form of a-).
Although gerunds and present participles are morphologically identical, their grammatical functions differ substantially.
In Norwegian, the present participle may be used to form adjectives or adverbs denoting the possibility or convenience of performing the action prescribed by the verb.
[25] The perfect participle is usually passive in meaning, and thus mainly formed from transitive verbs, for example frāctus "broken", missus "sent (by someone)".
Thus a simple participle such as frāctus "broken" can change to frācta, frāctum, frāctī, frāctō and so on, according to its gender, number, and case.
[32] The past participle is used generally as an adjective referring to a finished action, in which case its ending changes according to gender and number.
There is a form of the participle for every combination of aspect (present, aorist, perfect, future) and voice (active, middle, passive).
Here are the masculine nominative singular forms for a thematic and an athematic verb: Like an adjective, it can modify a noun, and can be used to embed one thought into another.
πολλὰpollàκαὶkaìφύσειphúseiκαὶkaìἐπιστήμῃepistḗmēiδεῖdeîτὸνtònεὖeûστρατηγήσονταstratēgḗsontaἔχεινékheinπολλὰ καὶ φύσει καὶ ἐπιστήμῃ δεῖ τὸν εὖ στρατηγήσοντα ἔχεινpollà kaì phúsei kaì epistḗmēi deî tòn eû stratēgḗsonta ékhein"he who intends to be a good general must have a great deal of ability and knowledge"In the example, the participial phrase τὸν εὖ στρατηγήσοντα tòn eû stratēgḗsonta, literally "the one going to be a good general," is used to embed the idea εὖ στρατηγήσει eû stratēgḗsei "he will be a good general" within the main verb.
The table below mentions the different participles present in Hindustani, ɸ denotes the verb root.
[34] baiṭhnā / बैठना / بیٹھنا / to sit baiṭhtā baithtē baiṭhtī baiṭhtīm̥ baiṭhā baiṭhē baiṭhī baiṭhīm̥ baiṭh rahā baiṭh rahē baiṭh rahī baiṭh rahīm̥ Adjectival2 baiṭhā huā baiṭhē huē baiṭhī huī baiṭhī huīm̥ Adjectival2 baiṭhtā huā baiṭhtē huē baiṭhtī huī baiṭhtī huīm̥ Progressive baiṭhtē-baiṭhtē Progressive baiṭhē-baiṭhē baiṭhnā / बैठना / بیٹھنا / to sit baiṭhnā baiṭhnē baiṭhnī baiṭhnīm̥ & Agentive baiṭhnēvālā baiṭhnēvālē (agentive) a person who sits [sit-er] baiṭhnēvālī baiṭhnēvālīm̥ Infinitive baiṭhnē baiṭhkē, baiṭhkar Much like Ancient Greek, Sanskrit has a wide array of participles.
There are various kinds: Verb: правя [pravja] (to do, imperfective aspect): Verb: направя [napravja] (to do, perfective aspect): Macedonian has completely lost or transformed the participles of Common Slavic, unlike the other Slavic languages.
Arabic participles are employed syntactically in a variety of ways: as nouns, as adjectives or even as verbs.
For example, in dialects of the Levant, the active participle is a structure that describes the state of the syntactic subject after the action of the verb from which it derives has taken place.
Other verbs, such as rāḥa راح ("to go") give a participle (rāyiḥ رايح), which has a progressive ("is going…") meaning.
The exact tense or continuity of the participles is, therefore, determined by the nature of the specific verb (especially its lexical aspect and its transitivity) and the syntactic/semantic context of the utterance.
The active participle takes a variety of syntactic roles, such as a verb in present tense, a noun, and an adjective.
For example, דויד בילדותו היה גר בארצות הברית davíd b'yaldutó hayá gar b'arcót habrít (David in his childhood used to live in the United States).
There are eight types of participle suffixes; -en, -esi, -mez, -ar, -di(k/ği) -ecek and -miş[43][44] An easy way to remember those is a mnemonic taught in Turkish schools: "Anası mezar dikecekmiş", which has every type of the suffixes, and is still a coherent sentence, translated as "his/her mother is allegedly going to plant a grave(stone)".
Unlike in English, adverbial participles were conjugated to reflect the person and number of their implicit subjects; hence, an adverbial participle could replace a clause in the English sentence "If I were a marksman, I would kill walruses" since the subject was implied by the conjugation.
Esperanto has six different participle conjugations; active and passive for past, present and future.
These participles can be used in conjunction with the verb to be, esti, forming 18 compound tenses (9 active and 9 passive).