A systematic contrastive study of the word class status of passive participles in English and MSA

Abstract

This study investigates for the first time using strict explicit criteria the categorial status of the passive participle in Modern Standard Arabic  in contrast with English.  Sources were standard published accounts in grammars and articles, and native speaker intuition. It is shown how, while possessing a morphologically distinctive  form, i.e., that of a participle, its central associated syntactic functions in the two languages are twofold: adjectival, and verbal. Six adjectival criteria are explored contrastively: position attributively, predicatively with be or zero copula, and as complement of verbs like `seem’, occurrence with gradability markers, and in comparison structures, and in adjective construct state. Three verbal criteria were explored contrastively: occurrence with finite auxiliaries, with adverbs of time and manner, and with expression of the `by agent ‘ type in the two languages.   This study offers insights into the different properties that associate with each of these functions, drawing attention to comparisons between MSA and the more extensive work done on parallel issues in English. The concluding result is that there exists a set of criteria that can be applied to, at least with strong probability, identify participles as performing adjectival versus verbal functions. Many of these run parallel in English and Arabic, though construct state constructions in Arabic and the lack of an inflected verbal passive in English are points of divergence.