Agentive and non-agentive adjectival synthetic compounds in English

Abstract

In this paper, it is argued that synthetic compounds based on the passive participle in English fall into two classes, depending on whether they possess the capacity to license modifiers pointing to the presence of the external argument. Compounds such as computer-generated, pencil-drawn or home-made are typically used as eventive and resultative participles, both of which are syntactically agentive. Compounds belonging to this group are contrasted with adjectives such as action-packed, family-oriented, work-related or adult-themed, which are shown to behave syntactically like underived adjectives, with no traces of the external argument. As such, they correspond to the class of stative participles.