Grammar: forming participles

Previously, we looked into how to derive adjectives from verbs conceptually. In this lesson we cover the mechanics behind actually creating these words.

In a previous lesson, we covered what participles are: adjectives (“description words”) that we derive from verbs (“action words”).

However, we didn’t look into how to actually create the participle forms of a verb.

Recall that verbs express:

• who is doing something,

• when they are doing it,

• and how the action is being related (“it happened for real”, “it’s a command”, etc)

To derive an adjective from a verb (a participle), we need to answer the first two questions at least. That gives us a total of four possible combinations:

• active (the thing described does the action) + present (the action is happening right now),

• active (the thing described does the action) + past (the action has happened already),

• passive (the thing described is the target of the action) + present,

• passive + past

Let’s take a look at the formulas behind these forms: