English Grammar: An Introduction

PARTICIPLES are originally parts of verbs. In the VP's is going and had gone, going and gone are respectively the PRESENT PARTICIPLE and the PAST PARTICIPLE.

Participles often develop into either Adjectives or Nouns. This can sometimes cause ambiguity and hence problems for grammatical analysis. In speech at least, the dialogue below is ambiguous:

"Stop! I can't bear it!"
"What can't you bear?"
"/jur/ driving."
"Oh, I thought you were!"

Line 3 could be analysed as either

Consider also these sentences:

Sentence (13b) clearly refers to a particular occasion when the speaker was frightened by one specific spider. (Note the determiner and the adjective modifying spider). (13c) refers to a continuing state of fear. In the latter case, scared is an Adjective. Note too that was is a full verb; it cannot be an auxiliary when it stands alone. Sentence (13b) is in the PASSIVE form. (See further Unit 6.3.)

True adjectives can appear in two positions:

before the noun they modify: ATTRIBUTIVE position

or after the noun: PREDICATIVE position

If they are gradable, they can take comparative and superlative forms and be modified by degree adverbs. (See 2.5.)

If you substitute scared for happy in all these slots, you will see that the sentences remain grammatical and that scared has therefore developed from a participle into a true adjective. Participles which have undergone conversion can form compound adjectives, eg. goodlooking, hardboiled.