— n/-t
Diachronically, it is well known that the passive past participle is based on the Indo-European adjective with *-to or *-no, which was originally attached to a root or to a nominal stem. Therefore, these forms were initially independent of the verbal system and served to indicate «a state resulting from the possession of the notion indicated by the noun or of the process expressed by the root» [Meillet 1965: 268]. Their integration into the verbal system is therefore an innovation in Indo-European languages. Concerning the earliest period of common Slavic, forms with *-to or *-no are no longer nominal derivatives but participles, by virtue of their integration in the verbal system. This is why constructions with an — n/-t participle and the auxiliary «to be» first functioned as denoting a state, their actional meaning only appearing later [Maslov 1988: 77].
It is therefore unsurprising that in Slavic languages the interrelation of constructions with — n/-t is organised around a stative reference which, depending on several factors, may or may not imply a preceding event. In fact, certain constructions are conceived as purely stative for two raisons:
1. the participles may sporadically acquire this meaning because, diachronically, they are linked to a root or a nominal theme or because they are semantically removed from the verb (in this case, Khrakovskij [1991:151] speaks of lexicalisation):
Russian (1) Bolsaja cast ee territorii byla pokry-t-a
great part its territory.GEN was cover.PF-PPP-SG.F
lesami
forest.INSTR.PL
«The greater part of its territory was covered with forest».
Polish (quoted by [Siewirska 1988:253]) (2) Straty sa spowodowane dlugotrwala susza
losses are cause.PF.PPP long.term.INSTR drought.INSTR
«The losses have been caused by a long term drought»;
2. the verbs are polysemic and the participles are used in their true sense (3a) or may take on psychological connotations (3b):
Bulgarian (3a) Lodkata bese privarzana do nasata ograda
boat.the be.IMPF attach.PF-PPP.SG.F beside our.the gate
«The boat was attached to our gate».
(3b) Deteto e privarzano kam majka
child.the be-PRES attach.PF-PPP.SG.NEUTER to mother si
REFL.DAT
«The child is attached to his mother».
Only (3a) is open to discussion because, out of context, it may be analyzed either as an objective resultative, as defined by Nedjalkov and Jaxontov [Nedjalkov, Jaxontov 1988: 9][18], or as a passive form, because the perfective participle is bound to the base verb privar- zvam/privarza «to tie/attach» and the meaning of the construction is thus linked to transitivity and passivization (4a). But this perfective participle is mostly used in a psychological sense (3b) and it is thus semantically bound to the reflexive intransitive verb privarzvam se/privarza se and to (4b):
(4a) Toj privarza lodkata do nasata ograda
he attach.PF-AOR-3 SG boat.the beside our.the gate'
He attached the boat beside our gate'.
(4b) Deteto se privarza kam mene
child.the REFL attach.PF-AOR-3SG to me.DAT
«The child is attached to me».
The literature provides many examples in which the constructions «to be» + — n/- t participles are used with a purely adjectival meaning. They then predicate a property of the entity in the same manner as an adjective:
Bulgarian (5) Sinelite bjaxa tanki i iznoseni, kepetata
coats.the were light.PL and wom.out.PF.PPP.PL kepi.the izpomackani…
wrink.PF.PPP.PL
«The coats were thin and worn, the kepis (were) wrinkled…».
Removed from any context, one may consider iznoseni «worn-out» and izpomackani «wrinkled» as resultative participles, since they may be associated with transitive verbs and allow the characterisation of the objects «coats» and «kepis» as affected and changed by a preceding event, but the coordination of the adjective tanki «light» leads to the elimination of the resultative interpretation in favour of an adjectival interpretation. Therefore (5) denotes a state. Syntactically, the construction is predicative for the two following reasons: 1. «to be» does not function as a voice auxiliary because it operates on the past passive participle as it operates on the coordinated adjective tanki «light»; 2. the past passive participle fills the syntactic function of an attribute, and, being a verbal adjective, cannot be treated as a participle oriented toward the patient of the basic transitive verb. More complex is the following Bulgarian example (quoted by [Barakova 1980: 141]):
(6a) Njakoi ot lozjata bjaxa vece obrani i
some of vines be.IMPF.3PL already pick.PF.PPP.PL and pusti
empty.PL
Lit. «Some vineyards were already harvested and deserted».
If one admits that the form bjaxa obrani «were harvested» is resultative because it is formally derived from the verb obiram/obera «harvest, pick fruit» and because it implies a resulting state evidenced by the adverb vece «already», it would be difficult to explain the occurrence of the coordinated adjective pusti «empty». Just as in example (5), the participle is part of the paradigm of adjectives and the utterance denotes a state. As a result, it is impossible to give it either a corresponding active counterpart (6b) or to introduce an agent (6c):
(6b) *Xorata bjaxa vece obrali lozjata i
people.the be.IMPF.3PL already pick.PF.APP.PL vines and pusti empty.PL
Lit. «The people had already picked the grapes and deserted».
