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Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Participles: A. Past Participles as Adjectives

 First of all, let’s look at the dictionary entries of some irregular verbs.  These are verbs that are inflected with internal changes rather than just adding s, ed and ing: live lived lived living.  These words are among the Dolch Sight Words for Grade 1.

A.  The Past Participle as an Adjective
1.  A past participle is used as an adjective to modify nouns:
a)  A watched pot never boils.
b)  “There are known knowns; these are things we know that we know.
There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know.
But there are also
unknown unknowns; these are things we do not know we don’t know.”
—United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
c)  United, we stand; divided, we fall.  
[If we are united, … if we are divided,]
d)  Stunned by disbelief, she could not respond.
***She, being stunned by disbelief, could not respond.
c) In times past, a passed master was one who had presented a masterpiece to the masters of his guild, which masterpiece having been approved or having passed their approval, had then been admitted as a master craftsman to the guild; now a past master is one who has had a lot of experience in his profession or one who was once, in the past, elected ‘master’ of his society or lodge.  Nowadays the rule is this: When it’s used as an adjective or noun, spell it the archaic way of ‘past’; when it is the used in the perfect tense with ‘have’ spell it ‘passed’.

2. In the Passive Voice, the subject is being described rather than taking an action.  It follows the Simple Sentence Pattern V: N+LV+Adj
a)  I saw the thief. >>> The thief was seen by me.
b)  The ship sank. >>> The ship was sunk by big waves.
c)  The kite flew. >>> The kite was flown by an expert.

 NOTES:
1.  Verbals, even when being used as nouns or adjectives, retain their ability to be modified by adverbs  or by adverb phrases (
stunned by disbelief) or to take their own objects (Throwing a hay-maker punch) or subjective complements (Being a teacher).
2.  Nowadays:  I used 'nowadays' so that the reader would be certain that I mean 'now, that is in these days' rather than the transitional 'now' meaning 'meanwhile'.
3.  The Passive Voice begs the question "Who did that?".  Very often politicians, bureaucrats and other management types use the passive voice to avoid taking responsibility for unpopular or harmful decisions.   On the other hand, it is used a great deal in scientific and other professional reports and literature to show that the writer is unbiased and impartial and to avoid boring the reader with repeated statements beginning with 'I" or 'we' that may sound boastful.  Students are taught to use the Passive Voice in Grade 10 for the Literary Essay so that they will sound more like an impartial observer than an ordinary reader giving a book report; this is the stance of the literary critic.
 

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