How can you tell when a participle is being used as an adjective? [duplicate]

Consider the following sentence.

The blue page is stapled to the red page.

Although "stapled" is (apparently) past-tense, nonetheless the above sentence is clearly expressing something about the present. What gives? In particular, would it be wrong to label "stapled" as past-tense in that sentence?

(note: Er, actually the OP's question involves the difference between a passive construction and a construction with a predicative adjective -- F.E.)

• The blue page is stapled to the red page.

In particular, would it be wrong to label "stapled" as past-tense in the above sentence?

Well, let's look at this a bit. First of all, your example sentence has only one tensed verb, and that is the verb "is" -- the verb "is" is present tense. There is no verb in your example sentence that is past tense.

LONG VERSION:

The word "stapled" is either a past-participle form of a verb in a passive-voice construction, or it is an adjective in an active-voice construction, or the word could be ambiguous (where both possibilities of verb and adjective are acceptable).

I'm not sure how all interested you might be about this topic of "verbal passive versus adjectival passive", but that is a topic that can be rather lengthy and time consuming. I've already spent quite a bit of time on a recent lengthy post (about the pronoun "it"), so my fingers are a bit tired. But let me at least present to you some tidbits that could be used to support the idea that a passive interpretation for your example sentence could be reasonable.

(Note that no context for the example sentence was provided -- just an example sentence -- and so, that sorta means that we can create any reasonable context that we might want in order to support whatever it is that we're trying to prove.)

In general, if the "candidate" passive version has basically the same meaning as the active version, then that is usually good enough evidence to support the opinion that a passive interpretation is feasible.

And so, with that in mind: Imagine that we got a page of instructions. Those instructions could say something like,

"Customer staples A to B. Customer then staples C to D."

Those above instructions are in present-tense and in active-voice. Let's see what the candidate passive-voice version would look like,

"A is stapled to B. Then C is stapled to D."

Basically, that version has the same meaning as the active version (except that the active's subject info of "customer" is lost). This last version is also in present-tense, due to the verb "is". Here, the word "stapled" is a past-participle form of a verb, which is used in a passive construction.

And so, it seems that a passive construction interpretation -- where "stapled" is considered to be a past-participle form of a verb -- is reasonable.

(Aside: Passive constructions can also have an interpretation that has a stative meaning. That is, their interpretation is not required to have a dynamic meaning. But perhaps that topic is better for another day.)

In your example "The blue page is stapled to the red page": To compete with the passive construction (where "stapled" is a verb), it might be reasonable to consider an intransitive construction (where "stapled" is an adjective). In the intransitive construction, your example sentence might be a copular clause, where the word "stapled" is an adjective that has the function of predicative complement (and the predicand is the subject "the blue page"). Usually these types of constructions have an interpretation that describes a state.

But, what is important here is that, in both possible types of construction (passive and intransitive copular), the word "stapled" is NOT a past-tense verb form.

Hope this helps.

Swan classes this usage as participial (and thus I'd say verbal):

Most past participles have passive meanings when they are used like adjectives or adverbs.

... [emphasis mine]

He lived alone, forgotten by everybody.

cf He is loved [by everybody].

One trouble with classifying 'loved' as an adjective is that it isn't commonly used attributively

?/* A loved man.

except in combinations such as 'much loved':

Nelson was a much loved and respected figure.

However, this is possible:

_Dan is liked by all his new family.

_Oh? He told me that he thought wasn't really being accepted.

_No, no! He really is loved / popular.

'Popular' is obviously not a verb [form].

Sometimes, it is far easier than this to distinguish adjectival and verbal usages of -ed forms:

[On arriving back home, we saw that] the front window was broken. [adj]

The front window was broken by the ball Gayle hit over the main stand. [verb]

But in the sentence given, I'd agree it's ambiguous, though nearer the passive verb end of the continuum.

It's actually trickier than it looks.

The word is used as an adjective when describing a condition that already exists, as in When you open the file you get a surprise. The blue page is stapled to the red page.

But you might be describing a process: First, the blue page is stapled to the red page, then the yellow page is placed on top... Here, stapled is functioning as a true verb, but in the passive form.

The example given probably falls under the former heading, though you'd have to read it in context to be sure. The use of the past participle as an adjective is widespread in English, as I'm sure it is in most languages. The house is haunted: it's a haunted house. The pin is bent: it's a bent pin...