The Participle reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Participle

In linguistics, a participle is an adjective derived from a verb.

In the English language, there are two types of participle:

1. the present participle, which is formed by adding the suffix "-ing" to a verb (cf. gerund), and
2. the past participle, which is formed by adding the suffix "-ed".

Verbs which don't follow this process are called irregular verbs.

Examples

• "talk" becomes "talking" and "talked" (regular)
• "do" becomes "doing" and "done" (irregular)
• "get" becomes "getting" and "got" or "gotten" (irregular).

Many adjectives are formed from participles; as in "I saw a talking horse", "It was the done thing" and "She sold the crashed car at a loss".

A present participle is often confused with a gerund, a noun form of a verb with "-ing".

Other languages have different sorts of participles. E.g. Latin has:

• active present participle: educans "the one that teaches"
• passive past perfect participle: educatus "the one that has been taught"
• passive future participle: educandus "the one that shall be taught"

Old English ended present participles with -ind. In the East Midlands dialect, it merges with -ing, which originally only named actions.

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