Participles modify nouns but they do verby things. For example:
Did you see that dog napping on the couch?
Although the letter written to the king was sent three weeks ago, we haven’t heard back yet.
In these examples, the active participle, “napping,” modifies “dog” while the passive participle, “written,” modifies “letter.” English uses word order to coordinate its participles and nouns, while Latin matches gender, number, and case—that is, this works the same way that adjectives modify nouns. Indeed, participles are adjectives.
PRESENT ACTIVE :
In English - “Doing” “eating” “writing” “drinking” "napping" etc. “The girl eating the sandwich is my sister.” or, “The kid throwing rocks is scaring the squirrels.” In English, present active participles always end in -ing.
In Latin, present active participles are 3rd declension adjectives formed from the 1st principal part. Take your stem and add -ns, -ntis. They decline as a 3rd declension adjective, e.g. ingens, ingentis (huge).
• voco, vocare = vocans, vocantis – shouting
• video, videre = videns, videntis – seeing
• scribo, scribere = scribens, scribentis – writing
• iacio, iacere = iaciens, iacientis – throwing
• experior, experiri = experiens, experientis – trying, testing
FUTURE ACTIVE:
In English – “being about to eat,” “fixin’ to write,” etc. “The dog that’s about to eat my sandwich is extra fluffy.”
In Latin, they’re formed as 2-1-2 adjectives using the 4th principal part and sticking -ur- before the ending:
• voco, vocare, vocavi, vocatum = vocaturus, vocatura, vocaturum – being about to shout
• video, videre, vidi, visum = visurus, visura, visurum – going to see
• scribo, scribere, scripsi, scriptum = scripturus, scriptura, scripturum – being about to write
• iacio, iacere, ieci, iactum = iacturus, iactura, iacturum – fixin’ to hurl
• experior, experiri, expertus sum = experturus, expertura, experturum – going to try
PERFECT PASSIVE:
In English – “having been done” or “done,” “having been eaten,” “written” etc. “The sandwich eaten by the dog was 8 days old!”
In Latin—perfect passive participles ARE the 4th principal part of the verb, expanded out like a 2-1-2 adjective!
• vocatus, vocata, vocatum – having been called
• visus, visa, visum – having been seen
• scriptus, scripta, scriptum – written
• iactus, iacta, iactum – having been thrown
• deponent verbs, like any verb lacking a 4th principal part, do not have perfect passive participles, but on its own, expertus, experta, expertum can function as an perfect active participle ("having tried")
That's it for forms! There are no active passive or perfect active (other than in the instance of deponents) participles. Some grammaticians consider the gerundive to be a future passive participle--we'll look at that in greater depth in Chapter 5.
Fun tricks to help you identify participles in the wild:
• if you see a 3rd declension adjective with -nt- in the middle, chances are you have a present active participle! (note that our word present has that -nt- too!)
• You’re probably not going to see many future active participles, but the future active participle of sum, esse, fui IS futurus, futura, futurum. You can see that -uru- in the word "future" to help remind you of the form.
1a. Adding a layer of verbal definition to a noun.
Because participles are adjectives, they can modify nouns. Functionally, when you’re translating into English you can place the Latin participle after the coordinated noun.
vidimus adulescentos apprehensos a Romanis. We saw the youths arrested by the Romans.
Perpetua, habens parentes liberos, ipsa erat libera. Perpetua, having free parents, was herself free.
1b. In the place of a relative clause.
Latin often uses participles where we might prefer a relative pronoun in English. For example:
vidimus adulescentos apprehensos a Romanis. We saw the youths who had been arrested by the Romans.
Perpetua, habens parentes liberos, ipsa erat libera. Perpetua, who had free parents, was herself free.
🚨 Hopefully you noticed that the Latin examples in 1a and 1b were exactly the same! When you’re translating, you get to decide whether you’d prefer to use a relative clause or not. Either one may be correct, it’s just a question of context and emphasis. Notice that although we have a relative marker (“who”) in English, there’s no relative pronoun in Latin (no qui). The participle takes the place of the q-word in Latin.
2. As an ablative absolute!
In the examples above, you saw participles modifying a subject (habens) and a direct object (apprehensos).
Ablative absolutes are another common use of participles. They are distinguished by a noun-participle (or adj) pair in the ablative case that is not grammatically connected to the rest of the sentence. instead, it is just a free-standing ablative clause that tells you something about when or why the rest of the action of the sentence happened. Here are a couple examples:
patre non audiente,* Perpetua infelix erat. Since her father wasn’t listening, Perpetua was unhappy.
But, given the context of the sentence, you might want to opt for other possible translations, e.g.:
When her father was not listening, Perptua was unhappy. or
Although her father wasn’t listening, Perpetua was unhappy.
* present active participles decline like 3rd declension adjectives--so you might expect that the ablative singular form should be audienti (not audiente)--and indeed, the -i ending is correct, but so is the -e! Roman authors typically used the -e ending for ablative absolutes, so that's one more way that you can identify this construction as you read.
Here's another example of an ablative absolute:
apprehensā Perpetuā, pater doluit. When Perpetua was arrested her dad was sad.
Other possible translations: Since Perpetua was arrested, her dad was sad.
With Perpetua having been arrested, her dad was sad.
You could potentially also translate it as "Although Perpetua was arrested, her dad was sad" but here's where your role as the translator comes into play--does "although" make sense here?
One last tip on ablative absolutes:
When you’re translating, you’ll often see (or need to supply in English) words like “although,” “since,” “because,” “if,” or “when” to make the ablative absolute make sense. The Latin, however, will not include those transition words.