The participles can be divided into two main groups: present participles such as vechtend'fighting' and past/passive participles such as gekust'kissed'. Both types can be used as attributive adjectives, as is clear from the fact illustrated in Table 1, repeated from Section 1.2, that they exhibit attributive inflection.

Section 5.1.1, sub II, has shown, however, that the -e inflection is absent in the case of irregular past/passive participles like geschreven 'written' in (2) that end in -en (pronounced as schwa), but this is clearly due to a phonological condition that prohibits two immediately adjacent schwa-sounds in certain environments.

We will assume for the moment that exhibiting attributive inflection is a sufficient condition for assuming adjectival status for a certain element (although we will argue in Section 9.2 that the situation is more complex in that at least some attributively used participles retain certain verbal properties). If this is correct, we would predict that, in at least some cases, participles can also be used as predicates. A problem is, however, that predicatively used adjectives are not morphologically marked, so that we cannot formally distinguish the “verbal" past/passive participles from their “adjectival" counterparts.
      Given that the Dutch passive auxiliary zijn'to have been' is homophonous to the copular verb zijn'to be', the use of a participle with this auxiliary is expected to lead to ambiguity. The examples in (3) show that this expectation is indeed borne out; as indicated by the English renderings, the examples are ambiguous between an adjectival/state reading and a verbal/activity reading. The copular constructions in (3) are sometimes called adjectival passives; cf. Emonds (2006).

Note in passing it is sometimes assumed that the auxiliary zijn 'to be' in the passive versions of the examples in (3) is a perfect auxiliary and that the sentence contains a phonetically empty passive auxiliary; we ignore this for the moment but refer the reader to Section V6.2.2, sub II for a discussion of this.
      A similar ambiguity as in (3) might be expected to arise with the verb worden 'to become' , which can also be used both as a passive auxiliary and a copular verb. The examples in (4) show, however, that this expectation is not borne out. The examples in (4) can only be interpreted as passive constructions, and thus only express the verbal/activity reading; cf. Verrips (1996).

This restriction follows if adjectival past/passive participles are individual-level predicates: the examples in (5) show that individual-level adjectives like intelligent cannot enter the copular worden -construction either; cf. Section 1.3.2.2, sub IV, example (111).

The first two subsections below will show that adjectival past/passive participles do indeed exhibit more properties typical of individual-level predicates. The main goal of the following subsections, however, is to show the participles in (3) are ambiguous between an adjectival and a verbal reading by illustrating a number of tests that have been proposed to distinguish the verbal and adjectival past/passive participle.

Verbs and (gradable) adjectives differ in that only the latter can be modified by means of an intensifier like heel'very' or used as the input for comparative and superlative formation (although a potential counterexample to this claim is constituted by the past/passive participles of object experiencer psych-verbs; cf. the discussion of (59a)). These generalizations unfortunately cannot be used to distinguish adjectival past/passive participles from their verbal counterparts due to the fact that they are not gradable. Nevertheless, the generalizations can be used to distinguish verbal participles from so-called pseudo-participles, that is, adjectives that have the appearance of a participle, but do not have a verbal counterpart.
      This can be illustrated by means of the form bekend in (14a), which means “confessed" if it functions as a passive participle, but “well-known" if it is used as an adjective. The two interpretations of (14a) can be distinguished by means of the generalizations given above. Due to the presence of a door-phrase, example (14b) can only be interpreted as a passive construction (see Table 2 in the previous subsection) and, as expected, the verbal participle cannot be modified by heel'very' or undergo comparative/superlative formation. In example (14c) the participle is modified by heel and has undergone comparative formation and, as a result, can only be interpreted as an adjectival predicate of a copular construction. We refer the reader to Section 4.1.2 for a more extensive discussion of comparative formation of participles and pseudo-participles.

For completeness’ sake, note that example (14b) is perhaps marginally acceptable if we construe the door-phrase as causative, an option that becomes more salient if we use the copular worden'to become'; Zijn misdaad wordt door hem heel bekend/bekender'The crime is becoming famous/more famous due to him.' The meaning assigned to the participle makes it clear that we are dealing with a copular construction in this case.