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In linguistics, a participle (; abbr. ) is a nonfinite verb that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives.[1] SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms More narrowly, participle has been defined as "a word derived from a verb and used as an adjective, as in a laughing face".Crystal, David. (2008). A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (6th ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
"Participle" is a traditional grammatical term from Greek and Latin that is widely used for corresponding verb forms in European languages and analogous forms in Sanskrit and Arabic language grammar. In particular, Greek and Latin participles are inflection for gender, number and grammatical case, but also conjugated for tense and voice and can take prepositional and adverbial modifiers.
Cross-linguistically, participles may have a range of functions apart from adjectival modification. In European and Indian languages, the past participle is used to form the passive voice. In English, participles are also associated with periphrastic verb forms (continuous and perfect) and are widely used in . In non-Indo-European languages, 'participle' has been applied to forms that are alternatively regarded as (see Sirenik below), , , transgressives, and nominalised verbs in complement clauses. As a result, 'participles' have come to be associated with a broad variety of syntactic constructions.
The linguistic term, past participle, was coined circa 1798 based on its participial form, whose morphology equates to the regular form of preterite verbs. The term, present participle, was first used circa 1864 to facilitate grammatical distinctions. Despite the taxonomical use of "past" and "present" as associated with the aforementioned participles, their respective semantic use can entail any tense, regardless of aspect, depending on how they are structurally combined.
In the first sentence, interesting functions transitively in a non-finite sense as a participle that expresses the object him, thereby forming the grammatical equivalent of "that interesting him". In the second and third sentences, interesting functions as a prepositive adjective modifying subject. An adverb (such as very or recently) or a prefix (such as un-) can preface adjectival participles: "a very frightened rabbit", " recently fallen leaves", " uninterested people".
Some languages differentiate adjectival participles and adverbial participles. An adverbial participle (or a participial phrase/clause based on such a participle) plays the role of an adverbial phrase in the sentence in which it appears, whereas an adjectival participle (or a participial phrase/clause based on one) plays the role of an adjective phrase. Such languages include Russian grammar The Russian Participles. Part of "An Interactive On-line Reference Grammar — Russian" by Dr. Robert Beard. and other Slavic languages, Hungarian, and many Eskimo languages, such as Sirenik language,Menovshchikov, G.A.: Language of Sireniki Eskimos. Phonetics, morphology, texts and vocabulary. Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow • Leningrad, 1964. Original data: Г.А. Меновщиков: Язык сиреникских эскимосов. Фонетика, очерк морфологии, тексты и словарь. Академия Наук СССР. Институт языкознания. Москва • Ленинград, 1964 which has a sophisticated participle system. Details can be found in the sections below or in the articles on the grammars of specific languages.
Grammatical descriptions vary in the way these are treated. Some descriptive grammars treat such adverbial and adjectival participles as distinct lexical category, while others include them both in a single category of participles. Adverbial participles in certain languages may be called , , or (though this is not consistent with the meanings of the terms gerund or gerundive as normally applied to English or Latin), or transgressives.
The first sentence is in the past tense ( were), but a present participle expresses the progressive aspect ( be standing). The second sentence is in the future tense ( will), but a past participle is used for the perfect aspect ( have cleaned).
The following examples illustrate those concepts:
Old English present participles were marked with an ending in -ende (or -iende for verbs whose infinitives ended in -ian).
In addition, various compound participles can be formed, such as having done, being done, having been doing, having been done.Quirk et al., 3.15.
Details of participle formation can be found under English verbs and List of English irregular verbs.
Participles, or participial phrases (clauses) formed from them, are used as follows:
1. As an adjective used in an attributive sense:
Additionally, participles that express an adjectivally attributive meaning can be affixed to form adverbs, such as interestingly and excitedly.
2. In postpositive phrases. These are often regarded as functioning as a reduced relative clause:
3. In an adverbial phrase. In the following, the subject is understood to be the same as that of the main clause:
With a different subject, placed before the participle:
More generally as a clause or sentence modifier:
4. Participles are used to form periphrastic verb tenses:
The present participle forms the progressive aspect with the auxiliary verb be:
The past participle forms the perfect aspect with the auxiliary verb have:
5. The past participle is used to form passive voice:
Note that a past participle that complements a stative verb (e.g., "The files that are attached or "Our comrades who have fallen") becomes a passive participle within a passive voice construct.
6. As a gerund. The gerund is traditionally regarded as distinct from the present participle. A gerund can function transitively (e.g., "I like eating ice cream") or intransitively (e.g., "I like swimming"). In both instances, a gerund functions nominatively rather than adjectivally or adverbially—whether as an object (e.g., "I like sleeping") or as a subject (e.g., " Sleeping is not allowed"). Although gerunds and present participles are morphologically identical, their grammatical functions differ substantially.
Sometimes their morphological similarity can create contextual ambiguity, as Noam Chomsky pointed out in his well-known example:Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1965), 21.
When the meaning is "The practice of flying a plane is dangerous," flying functions as a gerund; when the danger concerns "Planes that fly" or "Planes when they are flying" (i.e., in contrast to grounded planes), flying is being used adjectivally as a participle. For more on the distinctions between these uses of the -ing verb form, see .
For more details on uses of participles and other parts of verbs in English, see Uses of English verb forms, including the sections on the present participle and past participle.
The following table summarises some of the uses of participles in English:
Examples in Nynorsk:
In Norwegian, the present participle may be used to form adjectives or adverbs denoting the possibility or convenience of performing the action prescribed by the verb. For example:
However, many modern Latin grammars treat the gerundive as a separate part of speech.e.g. Kennedy, Gildersleeve & Lodge, etc.
The perfect participle is usually Passive voice in meaning, and thus mainly formed from Transitive verb verbs, for example frāctus "broken", missus "sent (by someone)". However, certain verbs (called ) have a perfect participle in an Active verb sense, e.g. profectus "having set out", hortātus "having encouraged", etc. The present and future participles are always active, the gerundive usually passive.
Because a participle is an adjective as well as a verb, just like any other Latin adjective its ending changes according to the noun it describes. So when the noun is masculine, the participle must be masculine; when the noun is in the accusative case (object) case, the participle is also in the accusative case; when the noun has plural endings, the participle also has plural endings. Thus a simple participle such as frāctus "broken" can change to frācta, frāctum, frāctī, frāctō and so on, according to its gender, number, and case.
A participle can have a descriptive meaning like an adjective, or a more dynamic meaning like a verb. Thus in the following sentence the participle strīctō "drawn" is better taken as describing an action ("he drew his sword" or "after drawing his sword") rather than as describing the sword ("with a drawn sword"):
The dynamic, verbal meaning is more common, and Latin often uses a participle where English might use a simple verb.
The present participle often describes the circumstances attending the main verb. A typical example is:
Both the future and the perfect participle (but not the present participle) can be used with various tenses of the verb esse "to be" to make a compound tense such as the future-in-the-past or the perfect passive:
The perfect and future participles can also be used, with or without the verb esse "to be", in indirect speech clauses:
For uses of the gerundive, see Latin syntax#The gerundive.
Compound participles are possible:
Usage:
The past participle ( participio pasado or participio pasivo) is regularly formed with one of the suffixes -ado or -ido (-ado for verbs ending in "-ar" and -ido for verbs ending in "-er" or "-ir"; but some verbs have an irregular form ending in -to (e.g. escrito, visto, puesto), or -cho (e.g. dicho, hecho). The past participle is used generally as an adjective referring to a finished action, in which case its ending changes according to gender and number. At other times is used to form compound tenses: the present perfect, past perfect (sometimes referred to as the pluscuamperfecto), and the future perfect, in which case it is indeclinable. Some examples:
As an adjective (note how "escritas" agrees in gender with the noun, "las cartas"):
To form compound tenses:
There is a form of the participle for every combination of aspect (present, aorist, perfect, future) and voice (active, middle, passive). All participles are based on their finite forms. Here are the masculine nominative singular forms for a thematic and an athematic verb:
Like an adjective, it can modify a noun, and can be used to embed one thought into another.
In the example, the participial phrase τὸν εὖ στρατηγήσοντα tòn eû stratēgḗsonta, literally "the one going to be a good general," is used to embed the idea εὖ στρατηγήσει eû stratēgḗsei "he will be a good general" within the main verb.
The participle is very widely used in Ancient Greek, especially in prose.
baiṭhnī
baiṭhnīm̥
baiṭhnēvālī
baiṭhnēvālīm̥
Adjectival participle ( imiesłów przymiotnikowy):
Adverbial participle ( imiesłów przysłówkowy):
Due to the distinction between adjectival and adverbial participles, in Polish it is practically impossible to make a dangling participle in the classical English meaning of the term. For instance, in the sentence:
it is unclear whether "I" or "they" were hiding in the closet. In Polish there is a clear distinction:
Verb: услышать ʊˈsɫɨ.ʂɐtʲ (to hear, perfective aspect)
Future participles formed from perfective verbs are not considered a part of standard language. Shagal (Krapivina), Future participles in Russian: Expanding the participial paradigm
Verb: правя pravja (to do, imperfective aspect):
Verb: направя napravja (to do, perfective aspect):
In Classical Arabic, the participles do not participate in verbal constructions with auxiliaries the same way as their English counterparts and rarely take on a verbal meaning in a sentence (a notable exception being participles derived from Verb framing as well as participles in Qur'anic Arabic). In certain dialects of Arabic, however, it is much more common for the participles, especially the active participle, to have verbal force in the sentence. For example, in dialects of the Levant, the active participle is a structure that describes the state of the syntactic subject after the action of the verb from which it derives has taken place. ʼĀkil, the active participle of ʼakala ("to eat"), describes one's state after having eaten something. Therefore, it can be used in analogous way to the English present perfect (for example, ʼAnā ʼākil انا آكل meaning "I have eaten", "I have just eaten" or "I have already eaten"). Other verbs, such as rāḥa راح ("to go") give a participle ( rāyiḥ رايح), which has a progressive ("is going…") meaning. The exact tense or continuity of the participles is, therefore, determined by the nature of the specific verb (especially its lexical aspect and its transitivity) and the syntactic/semantic context of the utterance. What ties them all together is that they describe the subject of the verb from which they derive. The passive participles in certain dialects can be used as a sort of passive voice, but more often than not, they are used in their various lexicalized senses as adjectives or nouns.
Hebrew has a syntactic construction of the verb "to be" (הָיָה) hayá in the past tense, and the active participle that cognates to the past progressive tense in English. For example, the word עבדתי avádti means "I worked", and הייתי עובד hayíti ovéd means "I was working". Another use of this syntactic structure is equivalent to "used to" in English. For example, דויד בילדותו היה גר בארצות הברית davíd b'yaldutó hayá gar b'arcót habrít (David in his childhood used to live in the United States).
The participles work in the following way:
Each of the participles can be used as adjectives and so some of them can be turned into nouns.
Adjectival participles ( melléknévi igenév) can be one of these three types:
Adverbial participles ( határozói igenév) can be:
In Hungarian grammar, the infinitive is also considered a kind of participle, the noun participle ( főnévi igenév).
Turkish participles consist of a verb stem and a suffix. Some participles may be conjugated, but some may not. Participles always precede the noun they are defining, unlike in English.
Participle suffixes, like many other suffixes in Turkish, change according to the vowel harmony and sandhi.
There are eight types of participle suffixes; -en, -esi, -mez, -ar, -di(k/ği) -ecek and -mişErgin 310 Dâsitân-ı Sultân Mahmûd Mesnevisi'nde Fiiller, Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi , Osman Yıldız, May 2007 (PDF)
An easy way to remember those is a mnemonic taught in Turkish schools: " Anası mezar dikecekmiş", which has every type of the suffixes, and is still a coherent sentence, translated as "his/her mother is allegedly going to plant (i.e. erect) a grave(stone)".
These participles can be used in conjunction with the verb to be, esti, forming 18 compound tenses (9 active and 9 passive). However, this soon becomes complicated and often unnecessary, and is only frequently used when rigorous translation of English is required. An example of this would be la knabo estos instruita, or, the boy will have been taught. This example sentence is then in the future anterior.
When the suffix -o is used, instead of -a, then the participle refers to a person. A manĝanto is someone who is eating. A manĝinto is someone who ate. A manĝonto is someone who will eat. Also, a manĝito is someone who was eaten, a manĝato is someone who is being eaten, and a manĝoto is someone who will be eaten.
These rules hold true for all transitive verbs. Since copular and intransitive verbs do not have passive voice, their participle forms can only be active.
An informal and unofficial addition to these six are the participles for conditional forms, which use -unt- and -ut-. For example, parolunto refers to someone who would speak (or would have spoken), and a leguta libro is a book that would be read (or have been read). These unofficial participle forms are however very rarely used in practice.
Tense
Participles are often used to form certain grammatical tenses or grammatical aspects. The two types of participle in Modern English are termed present participle and past participle, respectively (often also referred to as the -ing form and -ed/-en form).Crystal, David. (2008). A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (6th ed.), pp. 351-352. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. The traditional terms are misleading because the participles do not necessarily correspond to tense:Huddleston, Rodney. (2002). In Rodney Huddleston & Geoffrey K. Pullum (Eds.), The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (pp. 78-81). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. the present participle is often associated with the progressive (continuous) aspect, while the past participle is linked with the perfect aspect or passive voice. See the examples below:
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Voice
Participles may also be identified with a particular voice: active voice or passive voice. Some languages (such as Latin and Russian) have distinct participles for active and passive uses. In English, the present participle is essentially an active participle, and the past participle has both active and passive uses.
Indo-European languages
Germanic languages
Early English
In Old English, past participles of Germanic strong verbs were marked with a ge- prefix, a West Germanic feature still found in most strong and weak past participles in Dutch and German today, and often by a vowel change in the stem. Those of weak verbs were marked by the ending -d, with or without an epenthesis vowel before it. Modern English past participles derive from these forms (although the ge- prefix, which became y- in Middle English, has now been lost — except in some rare dialects such as the Dorset dialect, where it takes the form of a-).
Middle English
In Middle English, the form of the present participle varied across regions: -ende (southwest, southeast, English Midlands), -inde (southwest, southeast), -and (north), -inge (southeast). The last is the one that became standard, falling together with the suffix -ing used to form . See -ing (etymology).
Modern English
Modern English includes two traditional terms for its participles:Quirk et al., 3.9
Such passive participles can appear in an adjectival phrase:
Adverbially:
And in a nominative absolute construction, with a subject:
+Active participle usage versus passive participle usage
!Example
!Tense name
!Lexical category
!Voice The baked bread n/a past participle (prepositive); adjectival Passive Bread baked daily n/a past participle (postpositive); adjectival Passive The acting president n/a present participle (prepositive); adjectival Active The time remaining n/a present participle (postpositive); adjectival Active You look lost present simple past participle; adjectival Passive You look charming present simple present participle; adjectival Active You are lost present simple past participle; adjectival Passive You are losing present continuous present participle; aspectual Active He has finished present perfect past participle; aspectual Active He has been finished present perfect past participle; aspectual Passive He has been finished present perfect past participle; adjectival Passive He has been finishing present perfect continuous present participle; aspectual Active She had been run past perfect past participle; aspectual Passive She had been run past perfect past participle; aspectual Passive She had been running past perfect continuous present participle; aspectual Active She had been running ragged past perfect continuous past participle; adverbial Passive She had been running unwillingly past perfect continuous present participle; adverbial Passive
Scandinavian languages
In all of the Scandinavian languages the past participle has to agree with the noun to some degree. All of the Scandinavian languages have mandatory agreement with the noun in number. Nynorsk and Swedish language have mandatory agreement in both number and gender. Icelandic and Faroese language have agreement in number, gender and case. The verb form used for the perfect (or "supine") aspect is generally identical to the nominative neuter singular form of the past participle for all verbs. For the present participle there is no agreement.
The participles are marked in bold. The first example involves a present participle and the two latter examples involves a past participle. All present participles end with an -ande suffix.
This construction is allowed in Nynorsk, but not in Bokmål, where suffixes like -elig or -bar are used instead.
Latin and Romance languages
Latin
Latin grammar was studied in Europe for hundreds of years, especially the handbook written by the 4th-century teacher Aelius Donatus, and it is from Latin that the name and concept of the participle derives. According to Donatus there are four participles in Latin, as follows:Donatus, Ars Minor: de participio.
"With drawn sword he came to the sleeping Lucretia."
"Balbus came to me running."
"On that day he was going to return to Rome."
" He was killed by the Thebans."
"He said that they were easily going to find the place / He said that they would find the place easily."
French
There are two basic participles:
Spanish
In Spanish, the so-called present or active participle ( participio activo or participio de presente) of a verb is traditionally formed with one of the suffixes -ante, -ente or -iente, but modern grammar does not consider it a true participle, as such forms usually have the meaning of simple adjectives or nouns: e.g. amante "loving" or "lover", viviente "living" or "live".
Hellenic languages
Ancient Greek
The Ancient Greek participle shares in the properties of adjectives and verbs. Like an adjective, it changes form for gender, grammatical case, and number. Like a verb, it has tense and voice, is modified by , and can take , including an object. Participles are quite numerous in Ancient Greek: a non-defective verb has as many as ten participles.
Indo-Aryan languages
Hindi and Urdu
There are two types of participles in Hindi and Urdu (called together Hindustani), aspectual participles which mark the aspect and non-aspectual participles which do not mark verbal aspect. The table below mentions the different participles present in Hindustani, ɸ denotes the verb root. The aspectual participles can take a few other copulas after them besides the verb honā "to be". Those copular verbs are rêhna "to stay", ānā "to come", jānā "to go".
|-
| colspan="2" | 1 The periphrasatic adjectival marker huā, huē, huī, and huīm̥ are shortened to wā, wē, wī, and wīm̥ respectively in colloquial speech.
|-
| colspan="2" | 2 The progressive aspect marking participles rahā, rahē, rahī, and rahīm̥ are shortened to rā, rē, rī, and rīm̥ respectively in colloquial speech.
|}
NON-ASPECTUAL PARTICIPLES George L. Campbell (1995). 041511392X, Routledge. 041511392XMichael C. Shapiro (2025). 9788120805088, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Pvt Ltd. ISBN 9788120805088♀ ɸ-nī ɸ-nīm̥ बैठनी بیتھنی
बैठनीं بیٹھنیں
♀ ɸ-nēvālī ɸ-nēvālīm̥ बैठनेवाली بیٹھنوالی
बैठनेवालीं بیٹھنوالیں
Sanskrit
Much like Ancient Greek, Sanskrit has a wide array of participles.
Celtic languages
Cornish
In Cornish, an equivalent present participle construction to English is formed by using ow ( owth before vowels) with a verbal noun, e.g. Yma an den ow hwerthin ("The man is laughing"), and den ow hwerthin ("a laughing man"). Like Breton but unlike Welsh, Cornish also has verbal adjectives which are used similarly to English past participles, e.g. dehen molys ("clotted cream"), from the verbal noun mola "to clot".
Welsh
In Welsh, the effect of a participle in the active voice is constructed by yn followed by the verb-noun (for the present participle) and wedi followed by the verb-noun (for the past participle). There is no mutation in either case. In the passive voice, participles are usually replaced by a compound phrase such as wedi cael ei/eu ("having got his/her/their ...ing") in modern Welsh and by the impersonal form in literary Welsh.
Slavic languages
Polish
The Polish word for participle is imiesłów (plural: imiesłowy). There are four types of imiesłowy in two classes:
Russian
Verb: слышать ˈsɫɨ.ʂɐtʲ (to hear, imperfective aspect)
Bulgarian
Participles are adjectives formed from verbs. There are various kinds:
Macedonian
Macedonian has completely lost or transformed the participles of Common Slavic, unlike the other Slavic languages. The following points may be noted: Macedonian Grammar, Victor Friedman
Baltic languages
Lithuanian
Among Indo-European languages, the Lithuanian language is unique for having fourteen different participial forms of the verb, which can be grouped into five when accounting for inflection by tense. Some of these are also inflected by gender and case. For example, the verb eiti ("to go, to walk") has the active participle forms einąs/einantis ("going, walking", present tense), ėjęs (past tense), eisiąs (future tense), eidavęs (past frequentative tense), the passive participle forms einamas ("being walked", present tense), eitas ("walked" past tense), eisimas (future tense), the adverbial participles einant ("while he, is walking" present tense), ėjus (past tense), eisiant (future tense), eidavus (past frequentative tense), the semi-participle eidamas ("while he, is going, walking") and the participle of necessity eitinas ("what needs to be walked"). The active and passive participles and the semi-participles are inflected by gender, and the active, passive and necessity participles are inflected by case.
Semitic languages
Arabic
The Arabic verb has two participles: an active participle ( ʾism al-fāʿil اسم الفاعل) and a passive participle ( ʾism al-mafʿūl اسم المفعول), and the form of the participle is predictable by inspection of the dictionary form of the verb. These participles are inflected for gender, number and case, but not person. Arabic participles are employed syntactically in a variety of ways: as nouns, as adjectives or even as verbs. Their uses vary across varieties of Arabic. In general the active participle describes a property of the syntactic subject of the verb from which it derives, whilst the passive participles describes the object. For example, from the verb كتب kataba, the active participle is kātib كاتب and the passive participle is maktūb مكتوب. Roughly these translate to "writing" and "written" respectively. However, they have different, derived lexical uses. كاتب kātib is further lexicalized as "writer", "author" and مكتوب maktūb as "letter".
Hebrew
Like Arabic, Hebrew has two types of participles (בינוני bênônî): an active participle (בינוני פועל bênônî pô'ēl) and a passive participle (בינוני פעול bênônî pā'ûl). These participles are inflected for gender and number. The active participle takes a variety of syntactic roles, such as a verb in present tense, a noun, and an adjective.
Finno-Ugric languages
Finnish
Finnish uses six participles ( partisiippi) to convey different meanings. Below is a table displaying the declension of the participles of the verb tappaa (to kill).
+ Finnish Participles
!
! Active
! Passive tappava Present active participle: Conveys an ongoing action. Used to omit the use of the relative pronoun who, which or that. Tappava means "killing" as in "killing machine". In other words, machine that kills. It can also work as the subject of the sentence. In other words, tappava can mean "the one who kills" or "he who kills". Tappava on... = He who kills is... tapettava Present passive participle: Conveys possibility and obligation. Possibility as in -able (killable) and obligation as in something that has to be killed. Tapettava mies can mean both "the killable man" (possibility) and "the man who has to be killed" (obligation). tappanut Past active participle: Used with the verb olla (to be) to construct the perfect and the past perfect tenses. In English the verb "to have" is used to form the perfect and past perfect tense (I have/ had killed), in Finnish the verb "to be" is used instead (minä olen/ olin tappanut). Just like the present active participle, it can also be used as the subject in a sentence, except it conveys the meaning in the past tense. In other words, tappanut can mean "the one who killed" or "he who killed". Tappanut on... = He who killed is... tapettu Past passive participle: A concluded action. Tapettu mies = the killed man. tappama- Agent participle: Always used with a possessive suffix. It is used to convey the meaning of the word "by" in English, since there is no word for "by" in Finnish. Hänen tappa mansa mies = The man killed by him. The tense of the translation depends on the context. tappamaton Negative participle: Used to convey impossibility (unkillable) and undoneness (not killed). Tappamaton mies means both "unkillable man" and "man (who is) not killed".
Hungarian
Hungarian uses adjectival and adverbial participles.
Turkic languages
Turkish
Participles are called sıfat-fiil () or ortaç in Turkish.Ergin 309
Eskimo–Aleut languages
Sirenik
Sirenik language, an extinct Eskimo–Aleut language, had separate sets of adverbial participles and adjectival participles. Unlike in English, adverbial participles were conjugated to reflect the person and number of their implicit subjects; hence, an adverbial participle could replace a clause in the English sentence "If I were a marksman, I would kill walruses" since the subject was implied by the conjugation.
Constructed languages
Esperanto
Esperanto has six different participle conjugations; active and passive for past, present and future. The participles are formed as follows:
For example, a falonta botelo is a bottle that will fall or is about to fall. A falanta botelo is one that is falling through the air. After it hits the floor, it is a falinta botelo. These examples use the active participles, but the usage of the passive participles is similar. A cake that is going to be divided is a dividota kuko. When it is in the process of being divided, it is a dividata kuko. Having been cut, it is now a dividita kuko.
Active -inta -anta -onta Passive -ita -ata -ota
See also
Notes
External links
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