Lost but not found, or: when grammarians fail us: The case of (past) participial premodifiers in English

Abstract

As a teacher of English to speakers of German I am routinely confronted with mistakes involving the misuse of participial premodifiers. Like many other languages possessing participial forms, German places only minimal constraints on the prenominal use of participles. The constraints in English, however, are both intrusive and perplexing. English happily allows 'lost property' or 'broken promises' or 'hired car' but normally disallows '*found property' or'*kept promises' or '*bought car'. Unaware of these constraints, my students commonly overuse participial premodifiers in English, producing errors that are easy to recognize and correct, but hard to elucidate. Focussing on the prenominal use of past participles, the present article tries to show that this is one area where language teachers are being seriously let down by grammarians. The standard pedagogical grammars provide scant guidance and even reputable scientific grammars disappoint. Only one leading grammar attempts to address the problem, but the account it provides is fragmentary and largely unconvincing. Latching on to the one aspect of this account that is correct, I try to develop a unified account of the phenomenon that may serve as a basis for a more satisfactory treatment of the issue both on the scientific and the didactic level.