Hello again!
Hi!
In this video, we’re talking about two variations on a special kind of adjective.
Okay.
Can you remind us what adjectives are?
Sure.
They’re words that describe nouns.
Right.
Take a look at this paragraph.
What adjectives do you see?
‘little’, ‘gruesome’, ‘terrified’, ‘delicious’, ‘strange’, and ‘fascinating’.
Good.
Now, which ones look like a different part of speech?
‘terrified’ and ‘fascinating’, I guess.
What do they look like?
Like verbs.
Yeah.
In fact, these adjectives are related to the verbs that they look like.
Can you see why?
Well, ‘terrified’ looks like the past of ‘terrify’,
which is what the monster does to the little girl at first.
But then he fascinates her.
Very good!
We can add -ed or -ing to a verb to turn it into an adjective.
How do we know which we should do?
Good question.
Let’s try both with the verb ‘bore’.
“Charlotte is bored.”
“Charlotte is boring.”
The two look very similar, but they mean different things.
In a way, they are opposites.
The first one tells us how she feels.
Maybe she’s in a long meeting or at a lame party or whatever.
She’s not that happy, and maybe a little tired or something.
Okay, so that’s ‘bored’.
What about ‘boring’?
Charlotte’s not a very interesting person.
Other people probably don’t like hanging out with her.
Yeah, probably not.
The meanings of the two words are similar, but the implications of the sentences are very different.
Yeah.
In the first case, Charlotte is affected by the verb ‘bore’.
In the second, she causes it.
So we use -ing for the cause, and -ed­ for the effect?
Pretty much.
Okay, but I might forget which is which.
How about this: When do you usually use -ing (also known as the present participle form)?
For progressive tenses.
Right,
and we use those to talk about verbs that are happening in the moment.
The verbs we can’t use with progressive tenses are stative verbs,
or verbs that just tell us how things are.
In other words, we only use -ing for active verbs.
Oh, so we use them for active adjectives as well.
Exactly.
Active adjectives are paired with nouns that cause the corresponding action.
Got it.
So, if the effect adjectives are the reverse, could we call them passive adjectives?
Yes, we could!
Passive adjectives convey the state that the noun is in because of an action.
Sometimes these are emotions, but there are plenty of other ways a noun can be affected.
Okay.
And they all end with -ed, right?
Most of them do,
but the ones that come from irregular verbs are a little different.
Is it the same as the irregular past form?
Close.
Not the past form, but the past participle form, which I like to call ‘Verb 3’ form.
Got it.
That’s the form we use for perfect tenses, right?
Right.
In fact, one way we use perfect tenses
is to focus on the result of an action,
rather than the action itself.
We also focus on the result when we use passive adjectives!
Yeah, you nailed it!
So, if we say “Jamie has broken her leg,” the action was that she ‘broke’ it earlier,
but now we can describe her leg as ‘broken’.
Well done!
We see that the leg didn’t actively do anything to earn its adjective;
something happened to it.
And that’s why we call those ‘passive’ adjectives.
That’s it!
Let’s go through a couple quick examples.
Okay.
Start with a situation, then tell me the cause and the effect.
“A speech compels Marcos to join the movement.”
The verb is ‘compels’.
The cause came from something active, right?
Just like progressive tenses tell us about an action, we need to add -ing to the verb.
So, “the speech is compelling.”
Very good.
What’s the result?
Marcos isn’t active; he’s just receiving the effect of the speech.
We use Verb 3 for passive, so “Marcos is compelled.”
Nicely done!
How about this one?
“The winter air was freezing,”
so it froze the lake, and then
“the lake was frozen.”
Fantastic job!
One final note is that the adjectives can come after to be or verbs like ‘feel’ and 'seems',
or the adjectives can come in front of the nouns.
Just like any other adjectives.
Right.
And there you have it.
That’s how we use participle adjectives.
Active adjectives use -ing when the noun causes the verb.
And passive adjectives use the Verb 3 form when the noun is affected by the verb.
That’s it!
Hey, are passive adjectives related to passive voice?
Why, yes, they are!
Can you remind us how to change an active sentence into a passive one?
We put the passive noun at the beginning,
then put ‘by’ and the active noun after the verb, or just get rid of it.
Next we add to be before the main verb,
and finally, change the main verb to Verb 3 form.
Yep.
If we start with the same sentence
then transform it either through the Passive Adjective method or through the Passive Voice method,
the final sentences look the same,
and they essentially mean the same thing.
Okay, that makes sense.
The purpose of both is to focus on the result of an action.
Very true.