The examples in Table 1, repeated from Section 23.2, show that past/present participles can easily be used as adjectives in prenominal attributive position.

Also from a morphological point of view, attributively used past/passive participles behave like adjectives, as shown by the fact that they exhibit attributive inflection in this position. For completeness sake, note that the -e inflection is absent in irregular past/passive participles ending in -en (pronounced as schwa), such as geschrevenwritten in (2). This is clearly due to a phonological condition prohibiting two immediately adjacent schwa sounds in certain environments, which is also operative in the case of the run-of-the-mill adjective open in de open-∅/*e deurthe open door; cf. Section 27.1.1, sub II, for further discussion.

We will assume for the moment that exhibiting attributive inflection is a sufficient condition for assuming adjectival status for a given element (although we will argue in Section 31.2 that the situation is more complex, in that at least some attributively used past/passive participles retain some verbal properties). If this is true, we predict that past/passive participles can also be used as predicates (i.e. complementives, supplementives, etc.). A problem, however, is that predicatively used adjectives are not morphologically marked, so we cannot formally distinguish the “verbal” past/passive participles from their “adjectival” counterparts.

Since the Dutch passive auxiliary zijnto have been is homophonous with the copular verb zijnto be, the use of a past/passive participle with this auxiliary is expected to lead to ambiguity. The examples in (3) show that this expectation holds true; as indicated by the English renderings, the examples are ambiguous between an adjectival/state reading and a verbal/activity reading.

Note in passing that it is sometimes assumed that the auxiliary zijnto 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 further discussion.

A similar ambiguity as in (3) is expected with the verb wordento become, which can also be used both as a passive auxiliary and as a copular verb. This expectation is not borne out; examples like those in (4) must be interpreted as passive constructions, i.e. they cannot be used to express the adjectival/state 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 such as intelligent cannot easily enter the copular worden-construction either; cf. Section 23.3.2.2, sub IV, example (112).

The first two subsections below will show that adjectival past/passive participles do indeed exhibit properties typical of individual-level predicates. However, the main goal of the following discussion is to show that 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 between the verbal and the adjectival past/passive participle.

Verbs and (gradable) adjectives differ in that only the latter can be modified by a degree modifier like erg/zeer/heelvery or used as input for comparative and superlative formation (although past/passive participles of object experiencer psych-verbs are potential counterexamples to this claim; cf. (66a) below). Unfortunately, these generalizations cannot be used to distinguish verbal from adjectival past/passive participles, because adjectival participles are not gradable. They can, however, be used to distinguish verbal participles from so-called pseudo-participles, i.e. adjectives that have the appearance of a participle but do not have a verbal counterpart.

This can be illustrated by the form bekend in (14a), which means “confessed” when it functions as a passive participle, but “known” when it is used as an adjective. The two interpretations of (14a) can be distinguished with the help of the generalizations given above. Due to the presence of a door-phrase, example (14b) can only be interpreted as a passive construction (cf. Table 2 above) and, as expected, the verbal participle cannot be modified by a degree modifier or take the comparative or superlative form. Since the participle in (14c) can be modified by heel and can take the comparative form, it should be interpreted as an adjectival predicate of a copular construction. For a more detailed discussion of comparative formation of participles and pseudo-participles, we refer the reader to Section 26.1.2.

For completeness’ sake, note that example (14b) may become marginally acceptable in the adjectival reading if we interpret the door-phrase as causative. This reading becomes more salient if we use the verb wordento become or if the nominal part of the door-phrase is inanimate; Zijn misdaad wordt door hem/zijn boek heel bekend/bekenderThe crime becomes famous/more famous because of him/his book. The meaning of the participle shows that this is a copular construction.