partisipiaalseid

Partisipiaalseid, also known as participial particles, are a type of word in Estonian grammar that functions as a combination of noun and verb forms. Unlike regular verbs, participles do not change their ending based on the grammatical context in which they are used. Instead, the participial form retains its form regardless of whether the verb is in the nominative or accusative case.

There are two main types of participles in Estonian: active and passive. Active participles, used with an auxiliary verb to form a finite verb, describe the doer of the action. The resulting verb is in the present continuous tense. Passive participles, also used with an auxiliary verb, describe the recipient or object of the action. The resulting verb is in the past passive voice.

Estonian participles convey a variety of aspects of action, including tense (present or past), voice (active or passive), and mood, though this last varies greatly by the verb in question. Participles can be further categorized based on their contexts: predicative participles used as a noun in a sentence with an auxiliary verb, and attributive participles used to modify a noun.

Partisipiaalseid often omit explicit auxiliary verbs in the sentence, relying instead on the nuance from the participial form to indicate time, voice, and mode. Particles can attach to other words to form compound words and phrase structures, showing a high degree of morphological flexibility. Research studies on the usage patterns of participles prefer the language's description as agglutinative and fusional with an underage occurrence of polysynthesis.