Pastness in Past Participle

The traditional terms present participle and past participle have been controversial for quite a long time. The issue is centered around whether present and past in the terms are appropriate or not. This paper addresses the past participle, in particular. Some grammarians have claimed that past in the past participle has nothing to do with pastness. In an attempt to avoid the controversy, they even prefer other terms. The past participle is used both in passive and in perfect. Passive and perfect have different syntactic functions, but they share the same verbal inflection called the past participle. The choice of the same verbal inflection provides a motivation for us to suppose that the past participle must have the same temporal role in the two constructions. This research aims to identify the temporal role of the past participle in passive and perfect: relative past.