Participle Uses

Uses of Participles
Attributive Participles
A Note on Aspect and Relative Tense
Complementary Participles
Circumstantial Participles

Uses of Participles

Participles are verbal adjectives, meaning that they tell us more about a noun. At their core, they are descriptive, but as we’ll see, based on a participle’s position within a sentence, it can also serve additional adverbial purposes, meaning that the participial phrase qualifies the verb’s action in addition to modifying a noun.

Because they are derived from verbs, participles can do things like take direct objects and prepositional phrases. The actor of an active/middle participle or the one receiving the action of a passive participle is the noun that the participle modifies. We’ll illustrate this through the specific examples below.

There are three major ways in which participles can be used and interpreted within a sentence.

An attributive participle acts like a pure adjective and tells us about an action that the modified noun is performing (if active or middle) or that the modified noun is experiencing (if passive).
A complementary participle, in addition to modifying a noun, also completes the meaning of certain main verbs, including some verbs of speech in a construction called indirect statement.
A circumstantial participle, in addition to modifying a noun, also explains the circumstances of the action of a main verb and answer questions like “when did it happen?” or “why did it happen?”

Attributive Participles

An attributive participle acts like a pure adjective and tells us about an action that the modified noun is performing (if active or middle) or that the modified noun is experiencing (if passive). As the name implies, a participle of this sort is usually (though not always) in attributive position. Note the following examples.

ὁ παῖς ὁ τοὺς ἵππους ἄγων τὰ βιβλία φέρει.

The participial phrase here centers on the present active participle ἄγων, which is masculine nominative singular and is in attributive position with the noun that it modifies, ὁ παῖς. Because ἄγων agrees with παῖς and because ἄγων is in the active voice, the action of “leading” in the participle is being performed by the “child.” Note also that wedged in between the repeated article and the participle is an accusative direct object, τοὺς ἵππους, that receives the action of “leading” in ἄγων. So, when we put all of those ideas together, we can come up with a translation like this:

The child leading the horses carries the books.

However, this kind of participle translation doesn’t necessarily indicate that you understand how the participle relates to the other parts of the sentence: for example, that it is an attributive participle versus a circumstantial participle (which we’ll talk about in the next section). So, when you interpret a participle as being an attributive one, one surefire way to communicate that is by translating it as a relative clause, a “who”, “which”, or “that” clause that functions adjectivally to tell us more about a noun:

The child who leads the horses carries the books.

This translation of the participle expands it beyond a simple “[verb]ing” or “[verb]ed” with the addition of a relative pronoun (“who”, “which”, or “that”) and the casting of the participle as a conjugated verb (“leads”), and it indicates more clearly how the participle functions within the sentence. The importance of this clarity will become clear once we see how versatile the participle can be in other contexts, as in circumstantial uses of the participle. (We will learn more about relative pronouns and actual relative clauses in the next module.)

μίκρα τὰ ὑπὸ τοῦ παῖδος φερόμενα βιβλία.

In this example, the present passive participle φερόμενα, neuter nominative plural from φέρω, and its genitive of agent ὑπὸ τοῦ παῖδος are in the attributive position between τὰ and its noun βιβλία. Outside of that article-noun phrase is the predicate nominative μίκρα (in predicative position, to form a full sentence).

The books that are carried by the child are small.

Because we have such latitude in translation, there are many possibilities and we don’t need to be limited to just one “correct” translation:

The books which are carried by the child are small.
The books that are being carried by the child are small. etc.

A Note on Aspect and Relative Tense

Recall that the tense of participles, like the tense infinitives, indicates aspect and thus relative time to the main verb rather than absolute time. While this distinction is difficult to determine with the infinitive constructions that we currently know, it is much clearer with participial expressions that get expanded into dependent clauses.

ὁ παῖς ὁ τοὺς ἵππους ἄγων τὰ βιβλία φέρει.
- The child who leads the horses carries the books.
ὁ παῖς ὁ τοὺς ἵππους ἄγων τὰ βιβλία ἤνεγκεν.
- The child who was leading/led the horses carried the books.

Present aspect means that the action of the participle is in progress, incomplete, and happening at the same time as the main verb.

In the first sentence, the present participle ἄγων indicates that the action of “leading” occurs at the same time as the main verb φέρει, which is in the present tense. Therefore, ἄγων gets translated with a present verb: “leads.”

We use the same present participle ἄγων in the second sentence, but note that the main verb is now the aorist ἤνεγκεν. Because present aspect means that the action occurs at the same time as the main verb, that means that our translation necessarily needs to reflect that: thus, we get “was leading” or “led” rather than the expected “leads”. While “led” (a simple past tense) illustrates the idea that the action of “leading” occurs in the past along with the action of “carrying”, the translation “was leading” illustrates the same along with also conveying the participle’s in progress quality.

ὁ παῖς ὁ τοὺς ἵππους ἀγαγὼν τὰ βιβλία φέρει.
- The child who led the horses carries the books.
ὁ παῖς ὁ τοὺς ἵππους ἀγαγὼν τὰ βιβλία ἤνεγκεν.
- The child who had led the horses carried the books.

Aorist aspect means that the action of the participle is instantaneous (one and done), completed, and happened before the main verb.

This is easy enough to see in the first sentence, which maintains the same relationship of time that one would expect between aorist and present: “led” is an instantaneous action that is completed and done before the action of “carrying” happens.

However, in the second sentence, notice how the translation of the aorist participle needs to indicate that it happened before the aorist main verb. To make this clear, we can use the English pluperfect tense (“had [verb]ed”), which indicates an action that occurred before an action in the past.

Whenever you’re translating a participle, you must always think in terms of duration, completeness, and relative tense; you can’t take “present” or “aorist” at face value necessarily.

Complementary Participles

Complementary participles complete the sense of a main verb that needs a complement. Although we’ve encountered this idea before with complementary infinitives, there are certain verbs that require a participle rather than an infinitive to complete them, like the two in the Week 14 Vocabulary: ἄρχω, “to begin”, and παύω, “to stop”.

Because the action in the participle will often be performed by or upon the subject of the sentence, the participle will often be in the nominative case to match.

αἱ γυναῖκες ἄρχουσι τὰ ὅπλα λαμβάνουσαι. The women begin taking the weapons.
οἱ δικασταὶ ἐπαύσαντο* τοὺς τοῦ ἀδίκου λόγους ἀκούοντες. The jurors stopped listening to the unjust man’s words.

* Note that παύω has a strong difference in meaning depending on whether it is in the active or middle voice. In the active, it means “to stop [someone else, in the accusative case] from [participle]-ing”. In the middle, though, it means “to stop [oneself, no extra words needed] [participle]-ing.” So, note in how the example above, the jurors are stopping themselves from listening, rather than stopping anyone else from doing so. If the sentence read:

οἱ δικασταὶ ἔπαυσαν τὸν παῖδα τοὺς τοῦ ἀδίκου λόγους ἀκούοντα.

the verb’s action is transitive, meaning that the jurors actively caused someone else to stop listening:

The jurors stopped the child from listening to the unjust man’s words.

Note also that the participle now matches τὸν παῖδα (masculine accusative singular), to indicate who is being stopped from listening.

Circumstantial Participles

Circumstantial participles perform double duty in a sentence. They both modify a noun and explain the circumstances of the action of the main verb. They will also usually be placed in predicative position to help differentiate them from attributive participles. Participles of this sort often answer questions like “when does the main verb happen?”, “why does it happen?”, “what obstacles could impede the main verb from happening?”, and “under what condition will the main verb happen?” Although there are some clues that may point to one type of circumstantial participle over another, often it will be a matter of personal interpretation, and you have to make a choice as to which of the following translations makes the most sense in the context of what you’re reading.

Temporal

If a circumstantial participle functions in a temporal fashion, it is answering the “when” question – “temporal” derives from the Latin tempus, “time”. The way that the participle answers the question (i.e., to indicate at what time the main verb occurred) depends on its tense/aspect.

Either tense of the participle may be translated with “when”.
Present participles may be translated with “while” or “as”.
Aorist participles may be translated with “after”.

We’ll illustrate this idea by using the same sentence with various tenses.

ὁ πολίτης βλέπει τὴν οἰκίαν ἐρχόμενος ἀπὸ τῆς ὁδοῦ.

The citizen sees the house when he comes from the road.
The citizen sees the house while he comes from the road.
The citizen sees the house as he comes from the road.

In each of these three sample translations, the conjunctions “when”, “while”, and “as” indicate the relationship of time between the present participle ἐρχόμενος and the main verb βλέπει – because the participle has present aspect, the two verb actions are happening at the same time.

Notice that because the participle is outside of attributive position, we have to be careful about who/what the participle modifies. Because ἐρχόμενος is masculine nominative singular, the only noun that it can modify is πολίτης – it is the citizen who is coming, not the house (οἰκίαν), which is feminine accusative singular, despite the fact that οἰκίαν is the closest noun to ἐρχόμενος.

ὁ πολίτης βλέπει τὴν οἰκίαν ἐλθὼν ἀπὸ τῆς ὁδοῦ.

The citizen sees the house when he came from the road.
The citizen sees the house after he came from the road.

In this sentence, we’ve changed the tense of the participle from present (ἐρχόμενος) to aorist (ἐλθὼν), which indicates a different relationship of time between the participle and the main verb. If we interpret it again as acting temporally (i.e., indicating when the action of the main verb occurred), either the conjunction “when” or “after” can make that relationship of time clear: the action of “coming” happened before the action of “seeing”.

Causal

If a circumstantial participle acts in a causal fashion, then it answers the question “for what reason” or “why is the action of the main verb happening?” As a result, the best subordinating conjunction to use to translate the participle will be “because” or “since”.

βλέψας τοὺς ἵππους, ὁ ἀνὴρ εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν ἦλθεν.

Because he saw the horses, the man went into the house.

The reason that the man went into the house is given by the participle βλέψας – he performed the action of “going” because he saw the horses.

A causal participle can occasionally be prefaced with a particle that indicates that you should interpret it in a causal fashion as opposed to temporal, concessive, or conditional: ὡς, ἅτε, or οἷα.

ὁ ἄδικος ἐν τῇ δίκῃ βλέπεται ὡς ἀδικήσας τοὺς πολίτας.

The unjust man is being seen at the trial because he wronged the citizens.

Concessive

If a circumstantial participle acts in a concessive fashion, then it is explaining an obstacle that would get in the way of the performance of the main verb. As a result, the best subordinating conjunction to use to translate the participle will be “although”, “even though”, or “though”.

τὸ ἔργον οὐ βλέψας, ὁ ἀνὴρ ἐθέλει περὶ αὐτῷ εἰπεῖν.

Even though he didn’t see the deed, the man wants to talk about it.

The man was not a witness to the deed, but despite that fact, which might prevent one from speaking knowledgeably about it, the man nevertheless wants to talk about it. The participle explains an obstacle that should get impede the performance of the main verb.

Like causal participles, concessive participles have a clue particle that lets you know that you should interpret it as concessive rather than temporal, causal, or conditional: καίπερ. In addition, the main clause of a sentence that contains a concessive participle might also include the adverb ὅμως, which means “nevertheless” or “still.” So, we can rewrite the sentence above as follows:

καίπερ τὸ ἔργον οὐ βλέψας, ὁ ἀνὴρ ὅμως ἐθέλει περὶ αὐτῷ εἰπεῖν.

Although he didn’t see the deed, the man nevertheless wants to talk about it.

Conditional

If a circumstantial participle acts in a conditional fashion, then it is explaining a condition that the main verb needs to be met in order to be performed. As a result, the best subordinating conjunction to use to translate the participle will be “if”.

ὁ μαθητὴς καλὰ ποιήματα γράφει τὰ βιβλία φέρων.

The student writes good poems if he brings his books.

Conditionals (“if…then” statements) are actually a discrete syntactic topic that we will discuss in the second semester once we learn about the subjunctive and the optative moods of the verb. For now, it’s enough to know that you can approximate a conditional by using a participle.

Genitive Absolute

One special use of a circumstantial participle, in any of its four interpretations above (temporal, causal, concessive, or conditonal), is in a construction called the genitive absolute. In all of the above examples, the participle modified an explicit part of the main sentence, like a subject or a direct object. A genitive absolute, however, uses a substantive in the genitive case and a participle that agrees with it in gender, case, and number to explain the circumstances around the action of the main verb, much like a regular circumstantial participle. The key difference, however, is that the genitive substantive does not bear any syntactic relationship to the main clause: the participle is not an action done by or done to a subject, direct object, etc., in the main clause.

τῶν ἵππων ἀπὸ τῆς ὁδοῦ αχθέντων, οἱ ἄνδρες τὸν οἶνον ἔμειξαν.

After the horses had been led away from the road, the men mixed the wine. (temporal)
Because the horses had been led away from the road, the men mixed the wine. (causal)
etc.

The participle of the genitive absolute functions like a regular circumstantial participle: you can interpret it as functioning temporally, causally, concessively, or conditionally, and it’s best translated with a full subordinate clause with an appropriate conjunction for your interpretation. You just have to be aware that instead of looking for a core part of the sentence for the participle to modify, the participle of the genitive absolute will be modifying a genitive subtantive as its actor (if active/middle) or acted-upon (if passive).