Temporal nature of Participles

J. Stephen Payne spayneop at hotmail.com
Tue Nov 12 18:51:33 EST 2002


Hi Mark,

To borrow an expression from Thomas Aquinas, "temporal" can be understood
in two ways.  In one sense, "temporal" indicates a chronological
occurrence, for example, the six tenses used in modern standard English.
In another sense, "temporal" indicates an action relative to another
action.  In this second sense, then, an action can occur before another
action, concurrent to it, or after it (still refering to modern standard
English), and, of course, all actions occur in time.  This is an
over-simplification, but it's useful for illustration.

Take the following sentence:  I watched him swimming in the lake.

"Swimming" is a present active participle, but no one would say that, in
this sentence, it expresses a chronological "present" action (sense number
one above).  Since the main verb is in the past tense, "swimming" is
temporal only in the sense that it took place concurrently with the past
action of the main verb.

It doesn't seem necessary to examine all occurrences of participles to
verify the above, just as it isn't necessary to test whether all nouns
actually do name a person, place, thing, or concept.

In one sense, then, I can see why you could envision participles
temporally, but at the same time I can see why grammars describe the
primary consideration of participles is Aspect.  I hope I haven't muddied
the water.

Stephen Payne
Taylors, SC



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