In a recent study, Bešlin (2023) investigates the syntactic and morphological properties of active participles across English, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS), and Hebrew, arguing that they should be classified as deverbal adjectives rather than as a distinct grammatical category. This challenges the prevailing view that participles exhibit a verbal/adjectival ambiguity, asserting instead that their external syntax and morphology align with adjectives while they internally contain verbal structure.

The research employs a comparative analysis of participial forms in the three languages, focusing on their distributional properties and interpretive characteristics. Bešlin provides evidence that active participles, regardless of their eventive or stative interpretations, share the same syntactic behavior as adjectives. This is demonstrated through various diagnostics, including copula selection and attributive modification, which reveal that active participles behave more like adjectives than verbs.

The study’s findings have significant implications for linguistic theory, particularly in understanding grammatical categories and the relationship between syntax and semantics. By arguing against the necessity of a separate participial category, this research invites a reevaluation of how participles are conceptualized within generative grammar, potentially influencing future work in language technology and translation studies.

Source: dx.doi.org