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How do you determine if a past participle--when used as a pre-modifier of a noun--is a verb or an adjective?

For example:

a. I saw a broken vase.

b. I saw a murdered man.

I think broken in a. is an adjective whereas murdered in b. is a verb. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

Is there any clear way of determining the part of speech of a past participle pre-modifying a noun?

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listeneva
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  • I agree with you. There are a few tests: “broken” can occur as complement to the complex-intransitive verb “seem” (“It seemed completely broken”). “Murdered” on the other hand fails all the tests: it can’t occur as complement to complex-intransitive verbs (* ”He seemed/became quite murdered”), or to complex-transitive verbs (* ”I found him quite murdered”). – BillJ Apr 17 '19 at 06:50
  • @BillJ Why do you think "It seemed/became broken" is possible while "He seemed/became murdered" is not? I mean, what kind of inherent difference between 'broken' and 'murdered' do you think makes the former construction possible and the latter construction impossible? – listeneva Apr 17 '19 at 07:56
  • By looking at the syntactic evidence, such as I mentioned. – BillJ Apr 17 '19 at 08:09
  • @BillJ I think your quite skews those tests. OK: "Police found him murdered in his bed." ??: "'He looked murdered to me' said PC Blunt." – StoneyB on hiatus Apr 17 '19 at 12:51
  • @StoneyB Are you saying that "found" in "Police found him murdered in his bed" or "He looked murdered to me" is an adjective? – listeneva Apr 17 '19 at 15:35
  • (I assume you mean murdered, not found) I'm questioning the validity of BillJ's test. I have no problem with murdered being both an adjective and a verb at the same time--that's what a participle is, a form that "participates" in both categories. – StoneyB on hiatus Apr 17 '19 at 16:15
  • @StoneyB (Yes I meant 'murdered'.) Then what's the reasoning behind thinking of 'murdered' in your sentences as an adjective? Just because 'murdered' describes a state of having been murdered? – listeneva Apr 17 '19 at 16:28
  • Exactly. "... found him asleep", "... found him drunk", "... found him happy" -- they're all the same construction, with an object predicate. – StoneyB on hiatus Apr 17 '19 at 16:40
  • @StoneyB If 'murdered' in your sentences is an adjective because it describes a state of having been murdered, 'murdered' in b. is also an adjective, right? – listeneva Apr 18 '19 at 01:32
  • Does it matter whether you call it an adjective or a verb? In those sentences you list, both are participles being used as attributive modifiers. – sky Apr 18 '19 at 02:32
  • @sky Do you think 'murdered' describes an attribute of 'man' in b.? If not, how can you call it an "attributive modifier"? – listeneva Apr 18 '19 at 02:38
  • I can't see that there is any difference myself. If someone hits a vase with a hammer he has broken it, if he hits a man with a hammer he has murdered him. Either they are both adjectives (which is my preference as they describe the condtion of the subject) or they are both verbs. – BoldBen Apr 18 '19 at 05:05
  • I am with @sky on this. Is it not enough to say that both broken and murdered are past participle forms that can be used attributively, i.e. they fulfil one of the tests that categorises words as adjectives? Attributively in this context means premodifying the noun. For example, afraid is an adjective that can not be used attributively, and mere is an adjective that can only be used attributively. – Shoe Apr 18 '19 at 08:28
  • @Shoe So are you saying that we can never know whether to classify a premodifying past participle as a verb or an adjective? – listeneva Apr 18 '19 at 08:44
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    My point is that both broken and murdered pass one of the essential syntactic tests of adjectives, namely they can premodify nouns. Broken also passes a morphological test of adjectives; it can take the prefix -un, which murdered cannot. But neither pass the can be made into an adverb test: e.g. happy > happily, broken > *brokenly. As a teacher I am most interested in usage not classification. So the question Is 'murdered' an adjective or a verb in the phrase 'a murdered man'? is not one that adds any value for me or my students. But I am willing to be persuaded otherwise! – Shoe Apr 18 '19 at 09:02
  • @listeneva As Shoe suggests, the real question is Why do you want to classify it? What does the classification clarify? – StoneyB on hiatus Apr 18 '19 at 11:29
  • @Shoe Non-adjectives can easily premodify nouns: In a government policy and all men, government and all are not adjectives but a noun and a determiner, respectively. And would you teach your students that these are all adjectives? I hope not. So it's not that you're not interested in classification itself but it's just that some things are harder to classify than others. To face the hard questions or to avoid them and dismiss them as valueless just because they're hard, that is the question. – listeneva Apr 18 '19 at 15:22
  • @StoneyB It clarifies what an adjective is. – listeneva Apr 18 '19 at 15:23
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    English learners need to know that you can premodify nouns with the present or past participle forms of many verbs, including murder: the murdering man, the murdered man. Whether you call such participles verbs or adjectives does not, in my opinion, advance their proficiency in the language. Of course, for linguists it is a different story, and I would be interested if anyone can point to a definitive reference on the matter. – Shoe Apr 18 '19 at 15:34
  • @Shoe So do you tell your students that government and all are adjectives? Or do you teach that not all pre-modifiers are adjectives? – listeneva Apr 18 '19 at 15:46
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    No, I don't tell them that government (committee), car (door), teacher (workroom), etc. are adjectives. I say that nouns can be used attributively (i.e. can premodify other nouns) - a very common feature of English. I've got 10 minutes to chat if you want. – Shoe Apr 18 '19 at 16:00
  • I do think "murdered" is an attribute of "man" just as "broken" is an attribute of "vase". You could also consider longer attributive phrases like "the kettle sitting on the stove is about to boil", where "sitting on the stove" is an attribute of "kettle". I'm not sure if it's useful to ask whether they're verbs or adjectives in your example, since the usage is the same. – sky Apr 19 '19 at 00:50
  • @sky When I say "adjectives describe attributes of nouns", I think the meaning of "attributes" is more narrowly interpreted than the meaning of "attributive" when sitting on the stove is said to be an "attributive phrase". Otherwise, you'll end up saying that sitting on the stove or sitting is an adjective, which cannot be true. When you say "attributive", you actually mean that it modifies something, not that it is an adjective. – listeneva Apr 19 '19 at 01:13
  • @Shoe How about a voting committe, an opening door, a working room? Do you tell your students that voting, opening and working here are adjectives or nouns? Or simply gerunds (or even participles)? – listeneva Apr 19 '19 at 01:56
  • I never said they are adjectives, I said they are attributives. I think your question as you phrased it is meaningless. You are assuming that there there is a difference between "broken vase" and "murdered man". There is not. There may be a difference between "broken" and "murdered", as BillJ pointed out above, but that is in restrictions on their other uses. When used as pre-noun modifiers, they are grammatically identical. I would not use this example in teaching the difference between attributive verbs and adjectives, because in this example, there is no difference. – sky Apr 19 '19 at 07:05
  • @sky I never said you said they are adjectives. If "broken" and "murdered" are the same, why is it that "broken" can be an adjective in "The vase was broken" while "murdered" cannot be an adjective in "The man was murdered"? – listeneva Apr 19 '19 at 07:16
  • I just say that many words can be put in front of nouns to describe or identify those nouns, including adjectives, other nouns and verb forms. My students often make mistakes such as She is a bored (i.e. boring) teacher or I was disappointing (i.e. disappointed) with my grade. Hence my comment above about being more concerning (i.e. concerned!) about usage than classification. Discussions about whether bored in the sentence above is a verb or an adjective would not help students to express themselves correctly in such contexts. – Shoe Apr 19 '19 at 07:41
  • @EdwinAshworth F.E.'s answer there doesn't even discuss a single case of a pre-modifying past participle. – listeneva Oct 05 '19 at 16:35

2 Answers2

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You can distinguish sometimes, but not always.

  • Very can’t come directly before a verb.

  • Carefully usually(?) won’t work before an adjective.

Neither of these tests seems to work very well for determining the part of speech of the words broken and murdered in your sentences. None of I saw a very broken vase, I saw a carefully broken vase, I saw a very murdered man, I saw a carefully murdered man sound natural to me.

herisson
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  • If your test doesn't work for my question, how could this be an answer? – listeneva Apr 18 '19 at 03:03
  • @listeneva: This post describes tests that can work for the general question ("How do you determine if a pre-modifying past participle is a verb or an adjective?" "Is there any clear way of determining the part of speech of a past participle pre-modifying a noun?"), even though they don't work for your specific example. If you don't find it helpful, that's fine. I just don't have anything better to offer at the moment. – herisson Apr 18 '19 at 19:48
  • I'd like your feedback on my own tentative answer. – listeneva May 23 '19 at 04:09
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I was trying to edit the question, but I realized that the edit could amount to an answer on its own. So I'm going to post my own answer to my question so I can get some feedback.

While thinking about this question, I've come to realize that broken and murdered are inherently different in that they are allowed to be complements of different form of the verb 'be' when they are used as complements of the verb 'be':

The OP's examples can be rephrased as follows:

a1. I saw a vase that was broken. (= a.)

b1. I saw a man that had been murdered. (= b.)

In order for a1. and b1. to equate in meaning to a. and b., respectively, different forms of the verb 'be' should be used in a1. and b1.

In b2., for example, using the form was, instead of the form had been, renders the sentence even ungrammatical, much less having the same meaning as b.:

b2. ??I saw a man that was murdered.

I don't know how to explain the ill-formedness of b2., compared with the well-formedness of a1., without the analysis that murdered in a. is not an adjective but a verb while broken in b. is not a verb but an adjective.

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listeneva
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  • This post makes sense to me, but I'm not sure I agree about the dubiousness of "I saw a man that was murdered" with a stative sense. I mean, when I try to think about it, even "I saw a murdered man" seems kind of funny to me in terms of its meaning (like you're talking about seeing a ghost or something). – herisson May 23 '19 at 04:12
  • @sumelic Maybe I should be looking for a more natural sounding example. – listeneva May 23 '19 at 04:28
  • Your interesting question has resurfaced, and you have added a further potential way of distinguishing broken and murdered. Your question and answer seem to be based on the assumption that every given word in a given context can be definitively categorized. In this case, the claim is that broken is an adjective and murdered is a verb. If this is so, then presumably it should be possible, not just to list the various tests that the words do or do not pass, but also to state which of the tests are necessary or sufficient for placing the words into one or the other of the classes. – Shoe May 23 '19 at 10:24
  • It is possible to conceive of a sentence I saw a very murdered man (e.g. he had been shot, stabbed and bludgeoned). The ability to add very is a characteristic of prototypical adjectives such as happy, so does this now make murdered an adjective in this context? – Shoe May 23 '19 at 10:24
  • @Shoe Well, I'm not as ambitious as you seem to think I am. I don't even know if what I've suggested can qualify as a test, let alone the test. I'm just trying to get some feedback about what I've been thinking. Regarding the very murdered example of yours, I think it's one thing to think of a context in which the man had been murdered in a very violent way, it's another to describe the man as a very murdered, which I find awkward at best, when you can describe him as a brutally murdered man. – listeneva May 23 '19 at 15:35
  • Well, Google returns several results for "very murdered", many of which appear to be in humorous contexts. But the question at the end of my last comment was a genuine one. It seems to me that certain words in certain contexts sit on a cline between, as in this case, a prototypical adjective and a prototypical verb. So making a binary choice is always going to be problematic unless the classification criteria are clear. Of course, it could be simply a matter of numbers: broken passes more adjective tests than murdered and murdered more verb tests than broken. – Shoe May 23 '19 at 16:00
  • Perhaps a linguist can help us out here. – Shoe May 23 '19 at 16:01