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Intro to Active and Passive Participles
This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 22 Mar 2017, 04:56.

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Menu 1. Intro to Participles 2. Active Participle 3. Passive Participle
[top]Intro to Participles

In Nieren there are two main participial verb forms, active and passive, both of which are expressed by appending particular suffixes to the verb.

[top]Active Participle

Semantically, it may be easy to confuse active participles and relative clauses, as both modify a noun in a similar manner. The difference between the two is that active participles define an inherent quality of the modified noun, whereas a relative clause states a temporary state.

Participles are not inflected for number or person but are inflected for tense.

Active participles in Nieren are formed by applying the adjectival suffix to the tense-inflected gerundive form of the verb:

Ivilatllé sillék baśúkov binvóśy The killing dogs ate the fish

In this case, the dogs aren't necessarily killing at that moment, but are rather dogs that (habitually, think aorist) kill.

Baś ivilatvóllé denś śen bajtilmó levó Something having killed a fish came to my house
Denś śen bajtilmó levó baś ivilatvóna ta Something came to my house having killed a fish (See article on Extraposition)

[top]Passive Participle

Passive participles are different from active participles in that the subordinating suffix '-na' is not used to construct the form, but rather the following suffix is used:

Passive participle suffix: -(n)si

Passive participles, much like adjectives, may take tense-inflected forms, which are simply composed of the tense suffixes and the passive participle suffix:

Uħilen gurvónsil maś eguśda vesgabe gévóna bajtmó levam sibavó.
The man that was seen by the boy wanted to go to the house behind the tree.
uħil-en
boy-GENGenitive (case)
possessive
gur-vó-nsi-l
see-PASTPast tense (tense)
action occurred before moment of speech
-PASSPassive voice (valency)
be verb-ed
-POSSGPossessed (case)
marks being owned
maś
man
eguś-da
tree-FROMUnknown code
vesga-be
back-LOCLocative (case)
'in, on, at' etc
gé-vó-na
be-PASTPast tense (tense)
action occurred before moment of speech
-SRSubordinator
marks subordinate clause
bajt-mó
house-DATDative (case)
indirect object; recipient, beneficiary, location
levam
go.INFInfinitive (TAM)
non-tensed verb
si-ba-vó
PFVPerfective (aspect)
completed action
-want-PASTPast tense (tense)
action occurred before moment of speech


In this example the passive participle suffix '-(n)si' is added to the end of the tense-inflected gerundive form of the verb, in this case gurvam, to modify the man as one who is/was watched by somebody.

When an agent is specified (in this case the boy), the folllowing genitive construction must be used:

Agent-GEN + Passive.Participle-POSSG + Patient-NOM

and is the suffix is appended after the participial suffix.

Functionally, the participle acts as an adjective in this case.
When used as nouns, the definite article is required:

Ú binsik eguśmó mbévó The ones that were eaten came to the tree

Passive Participles in Predicate Position
When a passive construction appears in the predicate position (e.g. "The city was built in ten days" rather than "The city that was built in ten days is here") there are two constructions depending on the presence of an agent.

If the agent of the action is not directly specified, the passive participle is used:

Gurumki nén raħil mbósevónsih
This city was built for the people

However, if the agent is specified, the passive voice prefix is used instead:

Gurumki nén resivil sidjombósevó
This city was built by the people
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