adjectivalparticiple

An adjectival participle is a form of a participle that functions as an adjective, describing a noun rather than performing an action within a clause. In English, participles come from present participles (-ing) and past participles (-ed, -en, etc.). When used to modify a noun, these forms are typically called adjectival participles or participial adjectives. They may appear attributively (before the noun) as in a boring lecture, a broken window, or a running total, or predicatively after a linking verb as in the lecture is boring or the window is broken.

Despite surface similarity, adjectival participles differ from non-participial adjectives in subtle ways. The -ing forms often convey dynamic properties or evoke the stimulus that causes a reaction (an exciting movie, a running clock), whereas the -ed forms usually describe a resultant state or the experiencer’s perspective (an excited crowd, a tired traveler). However, many -ed adjectives denote inherent properties or states and are not strictly active verb forms.

In grammar, adjectival participles can participate in compounding and can take degree modifiers (quite broken, very exciting). Some languages treat participial adjectives as a distinct class or allow them to inflect for gender or case, whereas others collapse them with ordinary adjectives.

Notes: The distinction between the adjectival use of a participle and a true verb phrase is a matter of syntax and semantics, not always of form. In many cases the participial form is formally identical to the participle used in a verbal clause, with context determining function.

See also: participle, verbal adjective, adjectival adjective, non-finite clause.