6

I'm rather confused about that word - 'Born'

According to Cambridge it is a verb.

According to this Quora's answer it is an adjective.

According to someone in ELL it is a verb in the passive voice.

Besides that, I'm not sure in which situations would we use these verb conjugations, as suggested here (Reverso):

a) Preterite - I borned

b) Present - I born

c) Present continuous - I am borning

d) Past participle - borned

Any further information about that word will be appreciated.

Community
  • 1
SunnySideDown
  • 145
  • 2
    According to Cambridge dictionary, born is not only a verb but it is also an adjective and a suffix, -born, e.g. Ben Okri is a Nigerian-born poet and novelist. – Mari-Lou A May 16 '19 at 20:55
  • 3
    Born is a deponent verb, perhaps the only one in English. It originated, as noted below, as a past participle of bear, but now we spell that form borne, with a silent E to contrast -- the pronunciation is the same. As a deponent verb, born must appear only in the passive, though it's active enough in meaning; so it always requires a form of be as an auxiliary, the same as predicate nouns and adjectives, and the passive and progressive constructions, and several dozen idioms. – John Lawler May 16 '19 at 23:18
  • 3
    @JohnLawler and all, Searching ELU the essential term to the matter, 'deponent verb' plus 'born', yielded a very similar discussion, which might be helpful here. – SunnySideDown May 17 '19 at 01:14
  • 1
    @SunnySideDown: Yeah, this is why I answer questions in comments so often; I've already got an answer on the site, so why repeat myself? And I get tired of looking to see if I've already done it. That one is seven years old. – John Lawler May 17 '19 at 03:12
  • 2
    Surely it cannot be an adjective? Btw, in BrE the past participle of "bear" is spelled "born" only in the passive, in the childbirth sense, as in "I was born in London". Elswhere it is spelled "borne", as in "My cherry tree has borne fruit this year". – BillJ May 17 '19 at 11:11

4 Answers4

6

I think it helps to look at the etymology of born.

Old English boren, alternative past participle of beran (see bear (v.)). "In modern use the connexion with bear is no longer felt; the phrase to be born has become virtually an intr. verb" [OED].

So it's origin is as a past participle, such as used in the passive voice, and that is strictly speaking the form it still has, but today when I say 'I was born in London' I don't usely think of it in the sense of 'my mother bore me' or 'I was born(e) in London by my mother'. That's what the OED mean by"virtually an intransitive verb".

On your other links: Cambridge talks of 'to be born' as the verb, which is ok. The Quora link says 'it is used' as an adjective. They mean it in the way a participle derived from a verb can be used as an adjective (e.g. I am tired).

As for the reverso link, it doesn't look right to me at all. I'd almost speculate that it's some kind of computer-generated table based on 'to burn'.

S Conroy
  • 6,089
  • 1
  • 14
  • 35
  • 3
    I had the same thought about the Reverso page being generated by an algorithm, but it can't be based on burn since Reverso correctly notes the irregular burnt: http://conjugator.reverso.net/conjugation-english-verb-burn.html – Juhasz May 16 '19 at 21:24
3

Dictionaries differ on this matter, but most dictionaries seem to say that 'born' is a past participle form of a verb, not an adjective. Cambridge Dictionary seems to be in the minority.

That said, it's hard to determine which dictionary should be followed. I think it entirely depends on how you define 'verb' and 'adjective'.

In my own dictionary, I think it's a verb always in the passive construction. There are some verbs that are predominantly used in the passive construction, so it wouldn't be too idiosyncratic to think of 'born' as one such extreme case.

The reason I don't think it's an adjective is because it is normally used in the past tense of the verb 'be'.

He was born in the States.

If 'born' were an adjective, it should be describing an attribute of 'He' rather than an event. But it is describing an event, not an attribute, in part because the past tense 'was' should be used in the sentence. The event of him being born occurred in the past, so the 'be' has to be in the past tense form. Hence, the impossibility of the following:

*He is born in the States.

listeneva
  • 1,447
2

Born can either be thought of as an adjective or as a verb that can only be used passively, or it's the past participle of the verb bear as in:

transitive verb

1a : to accept or allow oneself to be subjected to especially without giving way
//couldn't bear the pain
// I can't bear seeing you cry

...

2a : to move while holding up and supporting (something)

...

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bear

That Reverso page is nonsense. Because born can only be used in passive constructions (or perhaps because it's an adjective) uses like "I born," "I borned," "I am borning" - actually every single example on that page - are always incorrect.

Community
  • 1
Juhasz
  • 7,503
2

Born is a deponent verb, perhaps the only one in English. It originated, as noted [in other answers], as a past participle of bear, but now we spell that form borne, with a silent E to contrast – the pronunciation is the same.

As a deponent verb, born must appear only in the passive (though it's active enough in meaning) so it always requires a form of be as an auxiliary – the same as predicate nouns and adjectives, and the passive and progressive constructions, and several dozen idioms.                                        – John Lawler     [reformatted]

Edwin Ashworth
  • 83,272