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Consider the following sentence.

The blue page is stapled to the red page.

Although "stapled" is (apparently) past-tense, nonetheless the above sentence is clearly expressing something about the present. What gives? In particular, would it be wrong to label "stapled" as past-tense in that sentence?

(note: Er, actually the OP's question involves the difference between a passive construction and a construction with a predicative adjective -- F.E.)

tchrist
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goblin GONE
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    Isn't this just a standard form of the passive construction? See http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/activepassive.html – Leon Conrad Mar 23 '14 at 06:00
  • Er, the "stapled" in your example is not a past-tense form of a verb. (Also, wait a bit before accepting an answer.) Someone will probably come by and explain the possibilities in your example -- if you give them time. – F.E. Mar 23 '14 at 06:52
  • Oh, now I notice that the "acceptance" mark is gone. :) -- But I gotta go to bed now, way past my bedtime. Hopefully someone will write a solid post that'll explore both possibilities for your example sentence: "stapled" as a verb in a passive, and "stapled" as an adjective. – F.E. Mar 23 '14 at 08:35
  • @F.E., yeah took your advice, also there had been some discussion that the accepted answer might not be entirely correct. – goblin GONE Mar 23 '14 at 14:28
  • Yes, this is a tricky topic: verbal passives versus adjectival passives. A reasonable post that would analyze your example sentence could take up a whole bunch of pages and time. There are 4 choices: a) verbal passive, b) adjective, c) both 'a' and 'b', d) neither 'a' nor 'b'. -- I would be hoping for posts that take the position of 'a' or 'b' or 'c', and where those posts discuss using "tests" to support their opinions. (Hint: it is relatively easy to make up an argument that supports the position that at least a verbal passive interpretation is feasible for your example sentence.) – F.E. Mar 23 '14 at 18:03
  • Ok, having slept on this again ;) my thinking is that further context is required to make a call. If the context is description of a process where the blue page is (temporarily) the main subject, then passive voice sounds correct. The blue page is torn off the pad by the agent. The blue page is stapled to the red page... etc. If the context is a description of properties of the blue page, then it sounds more adjectival, e.g: the blue page is slightly smaller than the other pages. The blue page is stapled to the red page. It has the words "DRAFT" written across the top... etc. Sound reasonable? – wwkudu Mar 24 '14 at 06:02
  • @Josh61 "grammar" is the second in the list of type of questions that can be asked on ELU – msam Apr 28 '14 at 08:43
  • It's a past participle, serving the function of an adjective. Participles have the nifty ability to do that. – Anonym Apr 28 '14 at 15:53

7 Answers7

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Swan classes this usage as participial (and thus I'd say verbal):

Most past participles have passive meanings when they are used like adjectives or adverbs.

... [emphasis mine]

He lived alone, forgotten by everybody.

cf He is loved [by everybody].

One trouble with classifying 'loved' as an adjective is that it isn't commonly used attributively

?/* A loved man.

except in combinations such as 'much loved':

Nelson was a much loved and respected figure.

However, this is possible:

_Dan is liked by all his new family.

_Oh? He told me that he thought wasn't really being accepted.

_No, no! He really is loved / popular.

'Popular' is obviously not a verb [form].

Sometimes, it is far easier than this to distinguish adjectival and verbal usages of -ed forms:

[On arriving back home, we saw that] the front window was broken. [adj]

The front window was broken by the ball Gayle hit over the main stand. [verb]

But in the sentence given, I'd agree it's ambiguous, though nearer the passive verb end of the continuum.

Edwin Ashworth
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    The fact that a question is answered differently by people who espouse different analyses doesn't license it being asked again. If a contributor believes that answers are insufficient or that further efforts should be made to clarify the best of competing analyses, the correct way to address this is to offer a bounty at the original/prototype (not always identical), and 'comment' to give the reason for this. Note that references are given in the standard of answers the Help Center requests. 'Most past participles have passive meanings when they are used like [not 'as'] adjectives or adverbs.' – Edwin Ashworth Apr 18 '21 at 16:59
  • Got it. Thanks a lot for your reply. I thought my comment was rather poorly phrased, and so removed it. Hope you don't mind, @Edwin Ashworth. – user405662 Apr 18 '21 at 21:11
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  • The blue page is stapled to the red page.

In particular, would it be wrong to label "stapled" as past-tense in the above sentence?

Well, let's look at this a bit. First of all, your example sentence has only one tensed verb, and that is the verb "is" -- the verb "is" is present tense. There is no verb in your example sentence that is past tense.

LONG VERSION:

The word "stapled" is either a past-participle form of a verb in a passive-voice construction, or it is an adjective in an active-voice construction, or the word could be ambiguous (where both possibilities of verb and adjective are acceptable).

I'm not sure how all interested you might be about this topic of "verbal passive versus adjectival passive", but that is a topic that can be rather lengthy and time consuming. I've already spent quite a bit of time on a recent lengthy post (about the pronoun "it"), so my fingers are a bit tired. But let me at least present to you some tidbits that could be used to support the idea that a passive interpretation for your example sentence could be reasonable.

(Note that no context for the example sentence was provided -- just an example sentence -- and so, that sorta means that we can create any reasonable context that we might want in order to support whatever it is that we're trying to prove.)

In general, if the "candidate" passive version has basically the same meaning as the active version, then that is usually good enough evidence to support the opinion that a passive interpretation is feasible.

And so, with that in mind: Imagine that we got a page of instructions. Those instructions could say something like,

"Customer staples A to B. Customer then staples C to D."

Those above instructions are in present-tense and in active-voice. Let's see what the candidate passive-voice version would look like,

"A is stapled to B. Then C is stapled to D."

Basically, that version has the same meaning as the active version (except that the active's subject info of "customer" is lost). This last version is also in present-tense, due to the verb "is". Here, the word "stapled" is a past-participle form of a verb, which is used in a passive construction.

And so, it seems that a passive construction interpretation -- where "stapled" is considered to be a past-participle form of a verb -- is reasonable.

(Aside: Passive constructions can also have an interpretation that has a stative meaning. That is, their interpretation is not required to have a dynamic meaning. But perhaps that topic is better for another day.)

In your example "The blue page is stapled to the red page": To compete with the passive construction (where "stapled" is a verb), it might be reasonable to consider an intransitive construction (where "stapled" is an adjective). In the intransitive construction, your example sentence might be a copular clause, where the word "stapled" is an adjective that has the function of predicative complement (and the predicand is the subject "the blue page"). Usually these types of constructions have an interpretation that describes a state.

But, what is important here is that, in both possible types of construction (passive and intransitive copular), the word "stapled" is NOT a past-tense verb form.

Hope this helps.

Community
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F.E.
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4

It's actually trickier than it looks.

The word is used as an adjective when describing a condition that already exists, as in When you open the file you get a surprise. The blue page is stapled to the red page.

But you might be describing a process: First, the blue page is stapled to the red page, then the yellow page is placed on top... Here, stapled is functioning as a true verb, but in the passive form.

The example given probably falls under the former heading, though you'd have to read it in context to be sure. The use of the past participle as an adjective is widespread in English, as I'm sure it is in most languages. The house is haunted: it's a haunted house. The pin is bent: it's a bent pin...

Terpsichore
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  • I don't see any difference between your first example, which you claim stapled to is being used as an adjective, and the second example, which might be describing a process. Both look identical to me. – Mari-Lou A Mar 23 '14 at 16:15
  • @Mari-LouA, the former is like a state (it is that way, stapled). In place of "stapled to" one might have, say, "together with". The latter is something done (it is stapled), potentially right now even, as in, "Look! The blue page is being stapled to the red page by the clerk". – wwkudu Mar 23 '14 at 16:34
  • Oooo, you be a brave soul! :) -- I usually enjoy watching a good debate, er, argument, er, discussion on topics related to verbal passives versus adjectival passives, especially on the internet. What makes it really interesting is that so much of the grammar info out there on this topic is misleading and/or faulty. – F.E. Mar 23 '14 at 17:56
  • The classic example of this type of ambiguity is 'flying aeroplanes can be dangerous' where the word-class of 'flying' is indeterminate. It might be a participial adjective (contrast stationary aeroplanes) or it might be an -ing form along the verb - noun gradience (contrast taking gentle strolls). Similarly, 'I was annoyed' can be interpreted verbally (e.g. I was annoyed by their behaviour) or as an adjective (I was (or felt) very annoyed) or even as both (I was very annoyed by their behaviour). Read more here. – Edwin Ashworth Mar 23 '14 at 18:53
  • Is "I stapled the red page to the blue one" active or passive? – nnnnnn Jan 12 '20 at 08:47
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It's easy. A participle is always being used as an adjective, since a "participle" is a verb which is being used as an adjective.

You can tell participles, which are not adjectives but rather verbs, from real adjectives by whether the -ing word can be modified by "very". Using that test on your example, "recording" and "shivering" are participles (not adjectives), but "willing" is an adjective (not a participle).

For every dedicated scientist patiently (*very) recording atmospheric pressure and wind speed while (*very) shivering at high altitudes, there is a carnival barker with a bevy of pretty girls (very) willing to dangle from a basket or parachute down to earth.

Greg Lee
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    i'm confused, sorry. i thought a participle could be used for e.g. the present continuous tense, and then that it isn't being used as an adjective –  May 22 '16 at 00:37
  • Hmmm. Exactly what user3293056 says above. Nearly everyone who believes in a difference between participles and gerunds recognises swimming in He's swimming to be a participle, don't they? – Araucaria - Him May 22 '16 at 01:07
  • @user3293056, I think the -ing form of the verb in the progressive aspect is being used as an adjective. It's not an adjective, but it is used to predicate a state after "be" just as adjectives are used. It is being used as an adjective is used. – Greg Lee May 22 '16 at 02:39
  • @Araucaria, Yes. "swimming" is a participle, but it is not an adjective. Uh, is there a problem here with what I've said? Similarly, in "the swimming boy", "swimming" is not an adjective (cf. *"the very swimming boy"), yet it modifies "boy" and attributes a state to "boy" as an adjective such as "active" would. So it is used as an adjective, even though it is not an adjective. – Greg Lee May 22 '16 at 02:48
  • I tend to use participle for -ing and -en verb forms heading adverbial clauses like while shivering at high altitudes; ones heading adjectival clauses like every dedicated scientist patiently recording atmospheric pressure could be called participles, too, though I don't have a whole lot of use for the category label. I tend to think of these as the remains of a relative clause. – John Lawler May 22 '16 at 03:13
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    You contradicted yourself, Greg. First you say that "A participle is always being used as an adjective" and then say "You can tell participles which are not adjectives but rather verbs ...". And that is precisely what happens when you cling on to this archaic view of participles. It simply doesn't hold water. The simple fact is that for the most part participles are verb-forms, but occasionally they have adjective forms (participial adjectives). For example, "entertaining" is indisputably a verb in The clown was entertaining the children, but an adjective in The show was entertaining. – BillJ May 22 '16 at 06:09
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    To say "so it is used as an adjective, even though it is not an adjective" is highly confusing and is precisely why the term 'modifier of' was introduced some years ago. Importantly, in a tree diagram, each word is assigned 2 labels; a category label and a function label, so In the NP a sleeping child, the word "sleeping" is assigned the category (part of speech) label ‘verb’, and the function label ‘modifier’, thus it is a VP functioning as pre-head modifier of "child". Likewise in a large house, “large” is assigned the category label ‘adjective’ and the function label ‘modifier’. – BillJ May 22 '16 at 07:31
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    @BillJ, I agree about 90% with what you say. It is confusing for sure -- just read over this discussion! However, confusing is not the same as wrong. I don't think I'm confused -- people just need to learn to distinguish between a masquerade and a conversion. A verb can masquerade as an adjective (then it's a participle) or a noun (then it's a gerund) without being converted to an adjective or a noun. // Your observation about how the term "category" is used is wrong. Maybe "lexical category" is used the way you think "category" should be used. – Greg Lee May 22 '16 at 16:42
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Substitute stapled with any similar meaning VERB in the past participle and you get:
"The blue page is glued/stuck/fastened/joined/sellotaped/clipped/stapled to the red page"

The construction is in the passive voice and the verb be is in the present tense. It is the same as saying:

Navel and Valencia oranges are grown in California (plural)

and

Coffee is harvested in Guatemala from December to March (singular)

Adjectives that precede the noun are called attributive

Blue/red/cheap/expensive paper.

However, we can also use verbs to describe nouns using the -ed ending e.g. "a folded red page" and "a stapled blue page". If the verb is irregular its past participle form is used e.g., "a written yellow page".

A glued / sellotaped / clipped / stapled blue page.

The words ending in -ed are called past participial adjectives because they are derived from past participles of verbs. (Emphasis mine)

The -ed adjectives (advanced, alleged, bored, complicated, excited, exhausted) have a completed or passive meaning.

"These were the condemned men, due to be hanged within the next week or two." (George Orwell, "A Hanging." Adelphi, August 1931)

If the past participle is placed before the noun, it's clear it functions as an adjective. In the OP's example

The blue page is stapled to the red page.

I would argue that the sentence is typically constructed in the passive voice; somebody or something stapled the two pages together. Using a different linking verb such as: become, seem, appear, feel, look, sound makes it clearer that the past participle is functioning as an adjective.

The blue page looks stapled to the red page

Mari-Lou A
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  • I love your thorough answer, but don't you think additional context is required to reach a conclusion? We can't tell in this case whether the emphasis is on what is done to the page (in which case I would go for passive interpretation), or a descriptive attribute of the page (along the lines of looks, etc., in which case the adjectival interpretation seems more valid). Without knowing which was meant, it remains ambiguous, albeit between two well-explained options. – wwkudu Mar 26 '14 at 03:38
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"Stapled" in this sentence is not a verb: it is an adjective. The verb in the sentence is "is".

Consider this sentence: "I carried the stapled pages to the filing cabinet." Here, I think it is clear that the verb is "carried". "Stapled" is an adjective describing the pages that were carried.

When verbs are used as adjectives, we often use the past-tense version of the verb, regardless of when the action happens. We say, "Yesterday we painted the whole building green. The building is now painted." "Tomorrow we will paint the upstairs rooms. The painted rooms will not have any furniture." Etc.

Other times we have a special version of the verb when it is used as an adjective. "I broke my pencil. The pencil is broken." A common error by children and foreigners learning the language is to say -- WRONG -- "The pencil is broke."

Jay
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  • I think it's a verb. It's just the passive form. If it were "the blue page stapled to the red page is mine" then it would be an adjective. – Noah Mar 23 '14 at 06:16
  • "When verbs are used as adjectives, we often use the past-tense version of the verb," -- Er, is that true? – F.E. Mar 23 '14 at 06:48
  • What about "The blue page is falling to the floor."? – Neil W Mar 23 '14 at 07:25
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    The answer is partly correct. 'Stapled' is being used as an adjective. +1. What you leave out is that 'stapled' is a 'past participle' of the verb, which is often used as an adjective. That is the difference between 'broke' and 'broken', the former is the past tense, the latter the past participle. Both past and present participles (...ing form) can be used as adjectives in this way. e.g 'a stapled page', 'a walking stick', 'a frying pan' – WS2 Mar 23 '14 at 07:51
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    @WS2 Er, why are people up-voting this answer? There are way too many errors in it. – F.E. Mar 23 '14 at 08:04
  • @F.E. I up-voted because the fundamental point about 'stapled' being used as an adjective, was correct. However I have since noticed that the respondent is someone with a 20.9k reputation. So I do tend to agree that there are too many errors for a person of such status. I had somehow had the idea they were a non-native speaker. – WS2 Mar 23 '14 at 12:16
  • @Neil Your example -- "is falling to the floor" -- resembles the example in this sentence, but it is a grammatically different construction. "The page is falling" and "The page is blue" both have a word after "is", but in the first case it is a verb and in the second it is an adjective. Just because you can replace word A with word B in a sentence and get a result that makes sense doesn't mean that A and B must be the same part of speech. – Jay Mar 24 '14 at 13:38
  • @F.E. "often use the past-tense version of the verb" I believe that's true. "lost cause", "failed attempt", "threatened invasion", "rebuilt city", "borrowed money" ... I can think of many examples. Note I didn't say "always", I said "often", and I gave several counter examples. – Jay Mar 24 '14 at 13:42
  • If a grammar considers those words to be a verb that is functioning as a modifier, then the verb form is generally considered to be a "past participle" (not "past tense"). That modifier most often has a passive interpretation (though sometimes it has a perfect interpretation, similar to that in a present/past perfect construction). For instance: "borrowed money" can be interpreted as money that was borrowed, "rebuilt city" as a city that was rebuilt, "threatened invasion" as an invasion that is threatened (by an enemy), "failed attempt" as an attempt that had failed, etc. – F.E. Mar 24 '14 at 18:56
  • @f.e. Yes, a verb that is being used as an adjective is called a participle. I was trying to avoid introducing another term to keep the discussion as simple as possible. If you want to say that it's incorrect to say that it IS a past tense, but rather I should say it LOOKS LIKE the past tense or is SPELLED THE SAME AS the past tense, well, okay. But I don't it's helpful to someone trying to learn the language to simply tell him the name of the thing he wants to do. You have to give him some hints how to actually do it. – Jay Mar 24 '14 at 19:56
  • A past-participle verb form is different from a past-tense verb form. Confusion can arise because for many verb lexemes, the two different forms have identical shapes. But in your examples, the verbs are past-participles. Some adjectives also have the same shape as past-participle verb forms (sometimes due to historical reasons), and so, different interpretations can sometimes be supported as to whether a specific modifier in a sentence is a past-participle verb or an adjective that happens to have the same shape. – F.E. Mar 24 '14 at 20:06
  • I was trying to explain that often, the past participle -- and as I say, I deliberately avoided using that word for simplicity sake -- looks the same as the past tense form, but not always. As far as I can tell you are agreeing with me on every point and then saying that I am wrong. Okay, you are using different terminology, like saying "the words have the same shape" rather than saying "they are the same word". Is that the substance of your criticism? That they're not the same word, they're two different words that have the same letters in the same order? As to your last sentence, ... – Jay Mar 24 '14 at 20:42
  • ... I don't understand what you're trying to say. It could be a participle, i.e. a verb that is used as an adjective, or it could be an adjective that is spelled the same as the verb and that has the same meaning as a participle. I don't see the difference there. If two words are spelled the same, mean the same thing, and have the same function in the sentence, in what way are they different? – Jay Mar 24 '14 at 20:44
  • @F.E. Well, I don't want to turn this into an argument. I think our disagreement here is just over the best way to explain it rather than the underlying facts, and if that's the case, anyone reading this thread has now see both pedagogical theories. Feel free to reply to my last posts, but if anything further you may say leaves me with nothing new to add, I'll just let it end there rather than shouting "says you!" and going in another circle. :-) – Jay Mar 24 '14 at 20:57
  • Er, I'm not arguing. I'm just giving you info that's pretty well accepted by many linguists and grammarians, such as the authors of the 2002 reference grammar, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. (I don't know of any current professional grammarian or linguist that would agree with your position -- that the verb form is past-tense.) I can easily substantiate what I've been saying. You can verify for yourself that the modifying verb form is NOT a past-tense form by using an example where the verb lexeme has different shapes for the past-tense and past-participle verbs. – F.E. Mar 24 '14 at 21:52
  • Why do you say "the verb is X", as if there can be only one verb per sentence? – nnnnnn Jan 12 '20 at 08:51
  • @nnnnnn Sure, there are more complex sentences that have more than one verb. But that's not really relevant to the point here. – Jay Jan 13 '20 at 15:03
  • 'The blue page was stapled to the red page as I watched' obviously shows a verbal usage. 'The blue page is stapled to the red page' could be a parallel dynamic (verbal) usage, or a static (adjectival) usage. It's indeterminate without context. Compare 'the window was broken' ['by the stone' / ', we noticed when we arrived']. – Edwin Ashworth Apr 16 '21 at 10:40
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Loved is still a verb, but it's the past participle, so plays a similar role to an adjective.

This sentence uses the passive voice.

Useless
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