Template talk:af-verb

Participles

There are a few problems with this template, the first of these is the compulsory inclusion of the present participle. Present participles in Afrikaans aren't so common that each verb's one is or even can be used and so forcing it we'll end up with a lot unattested forms, e.g. botterende (botter), aanbesteeënde (aanbestee), etc. are unattested.

The present particple currently being shown by the template is the form used adjectively, as it would appear attributively (e.g. aankomende), with no attention being given to the other (adverbial) form of the participle, e.g. aankomend. Either both should be shown or one should be used and link to the other form. Personally I think the latter form (without the -e) should be shown and on its page a link to the former form (ending in -e) and that this would work best. This does raise a problem with a small subset of verbs though, namely gaan and all of its derivatives. Their present participles are gaande or ends in -gaande, with no e-less form.

The second problem is with past participles. There can be up to three past participles for a verb, generally most of them only have two and some can be slightly irregular. Some examples:

infinitive	english meaning	past participle (to construct past tense)	weak past participle (used as adjectives)	strong past participle (used as adjectives, sometimes adverbs)
slaap	to sleep	geslaap	-	-
roei	to row	geroei	-	-
krimp	to shrink	gekrimp	gekrimp, gekrimpte	-
dra	to carry, to wear	gedra	gedra, gedraagde (also gedrae)	-
help	to help	gehelp	gehelp, gehelpte	geholpe
breek	to break	gebreek	gebreek, gebreekte	gebroke
onderwerp	to subject	onderwerp	-	onderworpe
bederf	to spoil	bederf	bederf, bederfde	bedorwe
voorskryf	tp precribe	voorgeskryf	voorgeskryf, voorgeskryfde	voorgeskrewe

So similar to my suggestion for present participles, the past participle should probably link to the inflected form (e.g. gekrimp should link to gekrimpte) where applicable. How to deal with strong past participles I'm not sure.

It should be noted that weak and strong past participles generally aren't interchangeable, e.g. in music gebroke akkoord cannot be gebreekte akkoord (similarly onderbroke akkoord can't be onderbreekte akkoord) and in phrases like bedorwe brokkie it can't be bederfde brokkie. Furthermore, (some) strong participles do add some intensity to the situation or have different uses, e.g. gebroke mens implies emotionally broken and battered, whereas gebreekte mens implies physically broken or a person with a disability.

If anyone would like to chime in or give some suggestions on how to address these problems, please feel free. --CeNobiteElf (talk) 16:27, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I can only speak from my knowledge of Dutch, so I will try to use that as a reference point so I know what the differences are.

• All Dutch verbs have a present participle, because I can't really think of a semantic reason not to have one. For Afrikaans verbs that don't have one, is there a reason why they don't? And what is used instead, to convey the same meaning?
• Dutch inflects present participles like normal adjectives, so the usual rules for the -e apply there. In Afrikaans this seems to translate to a distinction between attributive (-e) and predicative/adverbial (no -e). Do present participles work like adjectives in Afrikaans as well? Compare these three Dutch uses: De lopende man, De man is lopende, De man ging lopend naar zijn werk (in Dutch, the form after a copula has -e, which is an irregularity specific to present participles that you can ignore).
• In what circumstances would the form gebreek be used, aside from het gebreek? Can it also be used with is gebreek? I suppose it's the same question as above. From what I've gathered, old strong participle forms are nowadays used only as adjectives, and indicate a state or property rather than an action. What you described fits with that as well, and it seems a bit like the difference between is broken and has been broken. So maybe these should not be included as part of a verb's paradigm, but as separate adjectives.
• In Dutch, only some verbs have an inflected past participle but it is predictable which will have one and which won't. Transitive verbs always have one, and then the participle is passive in meaning and means "has been Xed". Intransitive verbs have one if the auxiliary is zijn, and then the meaning is active, "has Xed". So for example gebroken means "has been broken", while gevallen means "has fallen", but there is no inflection for geblaft because this is an intransitive verb with hebben, and something like geblafte hond makes no sense (like "barked dog" wouldn't).

—CodeCat 18:07, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

• They might all have one, but some of them are unattested and just sound plain wrong. From one of the examples I gave above, botterende doesn't sound outright wrong, but I've not seen it in any dictionary and can't think of any place you'd use it. Similarly aanbesteeënde is also completely unattested (and possibly misspelt, since aabesteënde will be pronounced the same, but that is also unattested). Present participles also don't make sense for a word like inplant (which would be inplantende) (to plant an object into the ground with a length sticking out; to plant plants of the same sort; to equip or inspire (a certain quality)) die inplantende paal? die inplantende vaderlandsliefde? die inplantende bome? none of those make sense. Interestingly enough, I just looked up plant (the verb) in the WAT and this is the headword "II ww., het geplant; byv. -, -, geplante, geplant." i.e. past participle is geplant, weak past participle is geplant, geplante, with no present participles. Searching for plantende in WAT only brings up plantende kerk which is a church through which their missionary work founds a new church. But I digress, in Afrikaans you commonly hear besig om te X or wat geX het instead of many participles, e.g. "the left-over/remaining food" = the oorblywende kos OR die kos was oorgebly het; "the tree-planting man" = die man wat bome plant OR die man besig om bome te plant (this depends on whether the man generally plants trees (former) or is currently planting trees (latter)).
• They do indeed work like adjectives. Hence why I chose to use that word earlier, the Afrikaans equivalent of your sentences would be die lopende man, die man is lopend, die man gaan lopend na sy werk toe.
• gebreek can be used with is or was (see the fourth bullet) and then means broken, die pot is gebreek > die gebreekte pot, hy breek haar hart > haar hart is gebroke > haar gebroke hart, for something like bederf the past participles are interchangeable (die kind is bederf/bedorwe > bederfde/bedorwe kind) for the most part, except in phrases like bedorwe brokkie (spoilt brat). I feel that it should be clear that these "adjectival" participles are related to the verb.
• I should've been clear about my example verbs, I gave a selection to illustrate the differences between them; that's why I included two intransitive verbs (slaap and roei), so yes, intransitive verbs are naturally excluded from having the other 2 past participles. I can only think of a gewees that takes wees (specifically was) in the past tense, and in its case it is as follows: wees | gewees | gewees,gewese | -. That one is a bit irregular though in that gewese can be used predicatively.

In Afrikaans wees + past participle (of transitive verbs) can also indicate a past passive meaning, though it generally takes was when it is a "once-off" action and ::is when it's a state change and is ongoing (in which case was indicates that a state has been undone or that to the knowledge of the speaker the state was still ongoing), e.g.

• geslaan (weak participle): "I had been punched/beaten" = ek was geslaan, "I was punched" = ek is geslaan ("I am being punched" = ek word geslaan; "I was being punched" = Ek was besig om geslaan te word);
• gebreek or gebroke (either works, though strong participles are more common attributively) "the pot was broken [and still is]" = die pot is gebreek ("the pot is broken"), "the pot had been broken [it is no longer broken]" OR "the pot is broken [last I checked]" = die pot was gebreek;
• begrawe (weak) "the body had been buried" = die lyk was begrawe, "the body was buried [and still is]" = die lyk is begrawe;
• doodgemaak (weak) "he was killed" = hy is doodgemaak (however it's common to hear was for such permanent state changes too).

"has Xed" in Afrikaans is simply indicated with "het", e.g. "it has fallen" OR "it fell" = dit het geval.

I still stand by that a strong participle (if a verb has one) should be indicated, perhaps not in the headword, but is there really enough verb forms to warrant a inflection table? The weak past participle can easily be indicated on the past participle's page, so nothing added to this template there.

I hope I answered all your questions, if something is unclear, just ask, since it is late at the moment. --CeNobiteElf (talk) 22:44, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

In Dutch you could say de inplantende boer is daar, en de oogstende boer is hier "the planting farmer is there, and the harvesting farmer is here". Here, the two participles are used as contrasting properties. This use is still clearly verbal because you can say de bomen inplantende boer "the tree-planting farmer" which includes a direct object as part of the modifying phrase - something only a verb could allow. That sounds a bit unusual but it's still proper Dutch and people wouldn't think it was wrong or anything. Any present participle can be used this way, so all verbs have a present participle in Dutch. So unless Afrikaans doesn't allow such phrases, I would assume that all Afrikaans verbs also have present participles.

As for the past participle... do I understand correctly that when you say die pot is gebreek then it has a clear connotation that someone broke the pot sometime in the past, whereas with die pot is gebroke there is only the indication that the pot is now in pieces, not that someone did something to it before? Maybe we can also use the same logic as with the present participle. In Dutch, you can say de door mij gebroken pot "the pot (that was) broken by me", which includes an actor as part of the phrase and therefore it must be a verb. What happens in this case when you do it to either of the Afrikaans participles? Can gebreek and gebroke both include an actor? That is, can either of them be "done by" someone? —CodeCat 23:36, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure about "gebroke" itself, but per se yes, irregular past participles can be used in such constructions. I quote from a text from ML Pienaar: "Die leesbaarheid van akademiese tekste" (2009): Johns (1997:60) meld dat dit vir leerders moeilik is om deur hulle geskrewe werk hulleself as objektiewe akademici voor te hou. So here the participle "geskrewe" is clearly verbal. I do think it would be good to add these participles to the template and perhaps call them "verbal adjectives" or suchlike. Even more important in my opinion, however, is the "full infinitive" of separable verbs, e.g. "(om) aan te bou", "(om) op te skryf". This should be added to the separable-verb template.

There is also another form, which I would call "gerundive", a variant infinitive ending in -e, which can be formed from a large number of verbs and which is used in the construction "is te XY-e" meaning "can be XY-ed", e.g. dit is te verwagte (from verwag). This e-form is productive in Afrikaans as shown by such examples as dit is nie te verstane nie, where Dutch would use "verstaan" (though it rather uses "begrijpen"). 90.186.83.177 21:28, 26 May 2021 (UTC)