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In linguistics, a participle (from Latin participium 'a sharing, partaking'; abbr. PTCP) is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. [1] More narrowly, participle has been defined as "a word derived from a verb and used as an adjective, as in a laughing face". [2]
In others, the position after the noun is more common but not fixed. The phrase bellum cīvīle "civil war" has the adjective following in about 60% of Cicero's examples. [173] In other commonly used phrases, the adjective always comes first. These include certain terms of relative position and certain adjectives of time: [172] dextrum cornū
ii) participial phrases, composed by the participle and a quasi-subject noun phrase; such structures form a full new predicate, additional to the verbal predicate: a so-called absolute construction. It is so called because case marking of the whole construction stands "loosened, separated, free" from the verbal (or other) argumentation
V2 is usually analyzed as the co-occurrence of these requirements, which can also be referred to as "triggers". The left-peripheral head, which is a requirement that causes the effect of V2, sets further requirements on a phrase XP that occupies the initial position, so that this phrase XP may always have specific featural characteristics. [16]
Verb phrases generally are divided among two types: finite, of which the head of the phrase is a finite verb; and nonfinite, where the head is a nonfinite verb, such as an infinitive, participle or gerund. Phrase structure grammars acknowledge both types, but dependency grammars treat the subject as just another verbal dependent, and they do ...
phrases formed by the determiner the with an adjective, as in the homeless, the English (these are plural phrases referring to homeless people or English people in general); phrases with a pronoun rather than a noun as the head (see below); phrases consisting just of a possessive; infinitive and gerund phrases, in certain positions;
In a passive use, an object or preposition complement becomes zero, the gap being understood to be filled by the noun phrase the participle modifies (compare similar uses of the to-infinitive above). Uses of past participles and participial phrases introduced by them are as follows:
The earliest use of the word clause in Middle English is non-technical and similar to the current everyday meaning of phrase: "A sentence or clause, a brief statement, a short passage, a short text or quotation; in a ~, briefly, in short; (b) a written message or letter; a story; a long passage in an author's source."