A first possible counterexample to the claim that only perfect and passive auxiliaries select a verb in the form of a participle is given in (112a), where the verb rakento get seems to select the participial form of the verb irriterento annoy. However, there are reasons to assume that we are dealing with a semi-copular construction of the type in (112b), in which gewondinjured must be seen as a pseudo-participle, because the corresponding verb wonden is completely obsolete and has been replaced in present-day Dutch by the morphologically more complex verb (zich) verwonden. If we assume that the participle geïrriteerd in (112a) is also not verbal but adjectival, the primed examples in (112) show that this correctly predicts that it behaves like a pseudo-participle in that it must precede the verb raken in clause-final position; examples such as (112a) are discussed in more detail in Section 2.5.1.3, sub IID.

Haeseryn et al. (1997:962) mentions cases similar to (112a) with the verb krijgento get, but again the position of the participle with respect to the finite verb in clause-final position suggests that we are dealing with semi-copular constructions; an example such as (113a) can be analyzed in a similar way to (113b) with the adjectival complementive schoonclean. For a more detailed discussion of this kind of semi-copular construction, see Section A28.2.1, sub I.

In a limited number of cases, modal verbs can take a participle as a complement. Since such constructions usually alternate with constructions with an additional perfect or passive auxiliary, Haeseryn et al. (1997:960-2) suggests that they are derived by elision of the auxiliary. Although this seems plausible At first glance, things may not be so simple. The following subsections discuss two cases: first, modal verbs like lijkento appear, schijnento seem and blijkento turn out, which can take a te-infinitival clause as their complement; then modal verbs like moetenmust and kunnencan, which can take a bare infinitival clause as their complement.

Haeseryn et al. (1997:963-4) provides a set of collocations consisting of a verb and a participle. Some examples are: (ergens) begraven liggento be buried (somewhere); (iemand iets) betaald zettento get even with someone; (zich) gewonnen/verloren gevento admit defeat; geschreven/vermeld/genoteerd staanto be recorded, verschoond blijven (van)to be spared; opgescheept zitten (met)to be stuck with. As Haeseryn et al. also notices, we may doubt the verbal nature of the participles, since they usually precede the finite verb in clause-final position; although the acceptability judgments seem to vary from case to case and from person to person, placing the participle after the finite verb is always the marked option, and in many cases it is simply ruled out; the judgments given in (124) are ours. Note, however, that the corpus study in Bogaards (2019b: Table 4.8) has shown that the V-participle order is relatively common with participles derived from particle verbs such as opgescheept in (124c); we leave this problem for future research.

If the participles in the examples above are indeed adjectival in nature, we can immediately account for the fact, illustrated in (125), that these cases do not exhibit the infinitivus-pro-participio (IPP) effect: if the participles marked “A” are indeed adjectival, the participles marked “V” must be the most deeply embedded verbs, and we therefore correctly predict that they must appear as past participles in the perfect tense. It also accounts for the severe ungrammaticality of the primed examples; adjectival participles always precede complex verb clusters.

For completeness’ sake, example (126a) shows that adjectival participles can permeate the verb cluster, provided that they precede the main verb. Example (126b) shows that in this respect they behave just like “true” adjectives. We refer the reader to Section 7.4 for a detailed discussion.

The claim that we are often dealing with more or less fixed collocations is supported by a corpus study of the combination of the posture verbs zittento sit, liggento lie and staanto stand with a participle, reported in Bogaards (2019a,b); the thirty participle-verb combinations in (127), based on Table 2 in the article, make up about 70% of all collected cases (the three sets of top 5 cases actually make up for about 50% already). However, Bogaards is right in pointing out that we are not dealing with truly idiomatic constructions, since about 500 different participles were found with these positional verbs, almost half of which occur only once.

The results of the corpus study in Bogaards (2019a,b) confirm Cornelis & Verhagen’s (1995) view that the semantics of the posture verbs restrict the meaning of the construction as a whole: the combinations exhibit a high degree of semantic coherence in that they generally refer to a locational relationship between the subject of the construction and a ground (cf. the term reference object in Section P32.3.1.1, sub II): the combinations with zitten refer more specifically to containment by or contact with the ground, those with liggen to contact with the ground, and those with staan to some form of imprintment.

Possibly genuine counterexamples to the claim that verbal participles can only be found as complements of perfect and passive auxiliaries are given in (128). These examples suggest that the verb komento come can select either an infinitive or a participle. The two constructions are restricted in the sense that the verb selected by komen must be a verb of movement accompanied by a directional phrase such as de tuin ininto the garden or the verbal particle aan, indicating that the entity referred to by the subject of the clause is approaching the speaker. Crucially, the alternative placements of the participles in the primed examples are equally felicitous, which can be taken as evidence for the assumption that we are dealing with verbal participles.

Haeseryn et al. (1997: 964-5) claims that the primeless and primed examples in (128) are identical in meaning and differ only in geographical distribution: participles are preferred by speakers of the southern varieties, whereas speakers of the northern varieties prefer the infinitive. They further claim that the construction with a participle is more restricted than the one with an infinitive: in the perfect-tense constructions in (129), the verb fietsento cycle must take the infinitival form.

However, the impossibility of the participle gefietst in the primed examples might lead one to claim that, despite the fact that the participle may follow komen in clause-final position in the primed examples in (128), the participle is adjectival in nature after all. If so, we predict that the unacceptable examples with the participle gefietst will improve when gefietst precedes the verb komen in its participial form (the IPP-effect is of course not expected if the participle gefietst is an adjective). Judgments on the examples in (130) vary widely: some of our informants judge them to be worse than the primed examples in (129), others judge them to be better, while some (especially speakers of the southern varieties of Dutch) judge them to be acceptable, provided that the participle gekomen precedes the auxiliary. The marked character of the constructions in (130) makes it impossible to draw any firm conclusions, especially since we have not been able to find any examples of this kind on the internet.

Better evidence for the assumption that the participle is adjectival in nature is the contrast between the two examples in (131); the diacritics are those given in Duinhoven (1997:551-2) and show that although Duinhoven considers the use of the participle marked compared to the use of an infinitive, it is acceptable when the participle is placed before the verb komen. Note that in this case we have found several cases on the internet (probably from Belgium) of the order zie ..... aan-V komen for the verbs wandelen/lopento walk, rennento run and vliegento fly. Duinhoven explicitly states that the contrast between the two orders in (131b) shows that the participle is adjectival in nature.

Duinhoven (1997:281ff) also shows that the komen + participle construction was very common in medieval Dutch and did not actually require the addition of a directional phrase or the verbal particle aan. He argues that the participle originally functioned as a manner adverb modifying the verb komento come, which is consistent with the fact that the participle is usually optional even in modern Dutch.

In this view, the komento come + participle construction is a relic from an older stage of the language, which is under pressure to disappear, i.e. to be replaced by the corresponding infinitival construction. For our present discussion it is important to note that the claim that the participle has, or at least originally had, an adverbial function implies that it is adjectival and not verbal in nature. This means that the komen + participle construction is special and cannot be taken as a straightforward counterexample to our claim that verbal participles are found only as complements of perfect and passive auxiliaries.