- (1) Latin has four participles: the present active, the future active; the perfect passive and the future passive. It lacks, however, a present passive participle (“being [verb]-ed”) and a perfect active participle (“having [verb]-ed”).
- (2) The perfect passive, future active and future passive participles belong to first/second declension. The present active participle belongs to third declension.
- (3) The verb esse has only a future active participle (futurus). It lacks both the present active and all passive participles.
- (4) Participles show relative time. What are participles? At heart, participles are verbs which have been turned into adjectives. Thus, technically participles are “verbal adjectives.”
The first part of the word (parti-) means “part;” the second part (-cip-) means “take,” indicating that participles “partake, share” in the characteristics of both verbs and adjectives. In other words, the base of a participle is verbal, giving it some of the qualities of a verb, for instance, -
- tense: it can indicate when the action is happening (now or then or later; i.e. present, past or future);
- conjugation: what thematic vowel will be used (e.g. -a- in first conjugation, -e- in second, and so on);
- voice: whether the word it’s attached to is acting or being acted upon (i.e. active or passive);
- And if it can express voice, then it must also be able to express expectation, in other words, will the participle be followed by a direct object (if so, it must be active) or an agent (if so, it must be passive)?
