Bláha, Ondřej, L-Participle, in: Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics Online, Editor-in-Chief General Editor Marc L. Greenberg, Lenore A. Grenoble. Consulted online on 19 March 2024, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2589-6229_ESLO_COM_035806

Ondřej Bláha

Abstract: An l-participle, or rather l-form (from the synchronic point of view), is a verb form derived by the suffix -l- from an infinitive verb stem. In order to express the subject-predicate agreement, a gender and number ending is added to this complex. The l-form together with various types of auxiliary verbs constitute the analytical form of the preterite (e.g., Ru ja rabotal ‘I worked’) that evolved from the Common Slavic perfect tense. In those Slavic languages that have multiple forms for expressing the past, the l-participle and auxiliary verb constitute the perfect tenses (e.g., Bg sa storili ‘they have done some work’). There are also the antepreterite or pluperfect forms with l-participle in the Slavic languages (e.g., Sk bol som prišiel ‘I had come’) and, to a limited extent, the analytical future containing the l-participle (e.g., Sn bom napisal ‘I will write’). The l-participle is also a part of the analytical conditional, which has two types in certain Slavic languages (cf. Cz chtěl bych ‘I would like [something real]’ and byl bych chtěl ‘I would like [something unrealistic]’). In Bulgarian and Macedonian, the l-form constitutes the renarrative mood expressing some mediated information. This mood has a number of forms parallel to the forms of the indicative mood.