Past participle

“ As now used, the new form stands to the old in about the ratio of three to one.
+Direction+.—Conjugate the verb choose in the progressive form by filling all the blanks left after the different forms of the verb be, in the preceding Lesson, with the present participle choosing; and then in the passive form by filling these blanks with the past participle chosen.
Notice that after the past participle of the verb be no blank is left. The past participle of the passive is not formed by the aid of be; it is never compound. ”

“ NOTE III.—When the insertion of the word of, to complete the conversion of the transitive participle into a noun, produces ambiguity or harshness, some better phraseology must be chosen. Example: "Because the action took place prior to the taking place of the other past action."—Kirkham's Gram., p. 140. Here the words prior and place have no regular construction; and if we say, "prior to the taking of place of the other," we make the jumble still worse. ”

“ PAST TENSE.
330 There is not any variation in the past verbal participle, from which the two forms of the past tense are derived; their formation, as shewn in, the table, is OF VERBS. 99
therefore very simple ; &*& having beaten makes in the first form r &&> / have beaten, S^^BSS thou hast leaten c. ”

“ Fossil participles as adjectives.
3. As learned a man may live in a cottage or a college commmon-room.—Thackeray
4. Not merely to the soldier are these campaigns interesting —Bayne.
5. How charming is divine philosophy!—Milton.
Forms of the participle.
264. Participles, in expressing action, may be active or passive, incomplete (or imperfect) , complete (perfect or past) , and perfect definite.
They cannot be divided into tenses (present, past, etc.) , because they have no tense of their own, but derive their tense from the verb on which they depend; for example,—
1. ”

“ in the unliterary grammar of life, where the future tense stands first, and the past is formed, not from the indefinite, but from the present indicative, “to have been” is “to be”; ”

“ And, meanwhile, I should say the intelligible discussion of these questions will involve a modification in grammatical usage. If we believe that our present selves are distinct persons from our past selves, it is manifestly improper to use the first person in speaking of our past selves. ”

“ He who has once undertaken to interpret his own age must make his interpretation keep pace with the progress of that age, if progress there be. It is, therefore, my duty to acknowledge as past what has ceased to be the present, before the same audience to whom I characterized it as the present. ”

“ Nay, further, have you never endeavored to recall the time, place, and circumstances of your former intercourse, and failing in this attempt, have almost believed that your spirits must have held converse with each other in some state of being anterior to the present, and that you are only now occupied in a reminiscence of the past? ”

“ One sufficient reason why we should occupy ourselves with the past of our language is, because the present is only intelligible in the light of the past, often of a very remote past indeed. ”

“ This recognition can never be founded upon anything other than present intuitions, intuitions, that is to say, of our present life, which contains the past in it, and persuades us of the veracity of a given piece of evidence, as now apprehended by us. And conversely, all perceptive judgments are, in some way, commemorative and historical, because the present, in the very act by which we hold it before our spirit, becomes a past, that is to say an object of memory and of history. ”

“ I never sent you one of those homespun letters, in fact, without quite a persuasion that it will be the last. But life always seems to keep new, somehow; and apresent hour always seems to me worthy any two of the past or the future. ”

“ Pragmatic reflections, however abstract they be, are thus in reality the present, and vivify the tales of the past with the life of to-day.—Here too a word should specially be given to the moralising and the moral instructions to be gained through history,—for which it was often studied.... Rulers, statesmen, nations, are especially bidden learn from the experience of history. ”

“ In a succession of events, say of sense-impressions, A B C D E..., the presence of B means the absence of A and C, but the presentation of this succession involves the simultaneous presence in some mode or other of two or more of the presentations A B C D. In reality, past, present, and future are differences in time, but in presentation all that corresponds to these differences is in consciousness simultaneously. ”

“ In simple sentences, the tenses of the subjunctive correspond in general to the same tenses of the indicative. But the present has a future meaning; the imperfect sometimes expresses past, sometimes present action; and the perfect sometimes expresses past action, and sometimes future action. ”

“ And there is another very solemn way in which the past lives on in each of us. For not only is our present self the direct descendant of our past selves, but that past still subsists in that we are responsible for it, and shall one day have to answer for it. ”

“ The present active and future passive participles are formed from the present stem, and the future active and perfect passive participles are formed from the participial stem. b. The present active participle is formed by adding -ns to the present stem. ”

“ "I wouldn't ask too much of her," I ventured. "You can't repeat the past."
"Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!" ”

“ Personally I find the past to be located on my left and the future on my right hand, but others inform me that the habit of mind, places the past behind and the future in front of them, while others again have the past beneath their feet and the future over their heads. ”

“ In the expression, "to take for granted," we have a participle attached to a verb by means of a preposition, as an object needful to complete it; and the next group shows two nouns, "talk and discourse," combined by the conjunction "and," so as to spare the repetition of the verb "to find," to which they both serve as "objects." ”

“ We must have learned to predict the past, so to speak, before we can predict the future; because the first use of the observed relations among fulfilled facts is to teach us by the anterior succession what the future succession will be. ”

“ So, if we put before it an article, an adjective, or a possessive, and thus give to the participle a substantive character or relation, there is reason to think, that we ought, in like manner, to take away its regimen, and its adverb too, if it have any, and be careful also to distinguish this noun from the participial adjective; as, "The running of a race,"—"No racing of horses,"—"Your deserving of praise."—"A man's compromising of his principles." ”

“ All the participles are wanting in defective verbs.
The verb ought, when used to express past duty or obligation, is followed by what is called the perfect infinitive—a use peculiar to itself because ought has no past form. ”

“ Grammarians define the perfect tense as that which expresses an action completed in the past and of which the consequences remain in the present. That is true of all our actions. Our characters, our circumstances, our remembrances, are all permanent. Every day we make entries in our diary. ”

“ The reconciliation will be reached when the growth of historical inquiry leads men to feel that past and present are parts of a continuous series, and to look upon their ancestors neither as simply ridiculous nor as objects of blind admiration. ”

“ If by means of your questions you direct her towards the past, she traces the whole course of the subject's history. If you turn her towards the future, she seems often to discover it as clearly as the past. ”

“ Unconsciously, and combined with higher 277things, it is in us yet, that old Faith withal! To know it consciously, brings us into closer and clearer relation with the Past—with our own possessions in the Past. For the whole Past, as I keep repeating, is the possession of the Present; the Past had always something true, and is a precious possession. In a different time, in a different place, it is always some other side of our common Human Nature that has been developing itself. ”

“ The invalid, compelled to keep his room for many hours of the day, was thrown upon his resources, and upon such as I could command for his amusement. The past is always a pleasant subject of discourse where the speakers are young, and the past is a day of sunshine, still lingering and warm. ”

“ And the records of the past, whether appearing to us, from a literary point of view, as mere chronicles or as true histories, become history again whenever they are apprehended by a new mind as an answer to a present problem, partaking of the activity of the mind that thinks them anew. ”

“ They carry with them the faded recollection of their own past history; the use of a word in a striking and familiar passage gives a complexion to its use everywhere else, and the new use of an old and familiar phrase has also a peculiar power over us. ”

“ Still, there will be a connection with the long past—a reference to forgotten events and personages, and to manners, feelings, and opinions, almost or wholly obsolete—which, if adequately translated to the reader, would serve to illustrate how much of old material goes to make up the freshest novelty of human life. ”

“ The faults attract chief notice that they may be mended; and as there seem so many of them, the impulse is to conclude that the past was better. It is well to be sometimes reminded what the past really was. ”

“ And next—that all the history of a place has not equally little to do with its present state; for past events are often, casually or otherwise, related to the present, and so become a fair subject of retrospect, unless restraints are to be imposed on this branch of knowledge which are unknown to any other. ”

“ Select the words in the following sentences that are used to modify nouns, and also imply action or being:—
A word that participates in the nature of the verb and the adjective is called a participle; as, Leaving the room, we walked into the garden. I found a treasure hidden in the ground.
A participle qualifies a noun or pronoun, like an adjective, and takes modifiers like a verb. A participle formed from a transitive verb takes an object. ”

“ In the case of ne'er-do-wells and failures, they could start again on an even basis with other men, unhandicapped by their previous records. Thus it can be seen that all inquiry into a man's past was resented. ”

“ In the expression "The very old man," the and old modify man, and very modifies old. Participle.A verbal used as an adjective, or as an adjective with adverbial qualities. In the sentence "Mary, being oldest, is also the best liked," being oldest refers exclusively, or almost exclusively, to the subject and is therefore adjectival. In such sentences as "He fell back, exhausted" and "Running down the street, I collided with a baby carriage," the participle refers in part to the verb and is therefore adverbial as well as adjectival. ”

“ This participle is sometimes used substantively; thus, “The loving are the daring.” “The slain were left to die.” Of course such a word as people is understood after these participles, and in analyzing these sentences it may be supplied if one so desires, but it is no more necessary than it is in the sentences,—“The good are happy, the righteous are blessed,” where a qualifying adjective is used as a noun.
2. The participial phrase as a substitute for a proposition.—We come now to those frequent and important uses of the participle where it saves a predication. ”

“ Obi. can only be fully learned from reading. It must not be forgotten that sē retains its usual reference to the subject of a sentence in Or. Obi.
{4) In graphic reports of speeches by historians, etc., the Primary Tenses are often not changed to Secondary Tenses, though the speech is a thing of the past. Compare the sequence of the Historic Present, § 389 (b) . ”

“ They originated from such expressions as I have a letter written, in which have ( = possess) is a transitive verb taking letter for its object complement, and written is a passive participle modifying letter. The idea of possession has faded out of have, and the participle has lost its passive meaning. The use of this form has been extended to intransitive verbs—Spring has come, Birds have flown, etc. being now regularly used instead of the more logical perfect tense forms, Spring is come, Birds are flown. ”