Participles and nominal aspect

This paper emphasizes the strong and weak points of the analyses of the Latin perfect and future participles proposed so far. Relying on traditional historical studies, I show that diachronic developments can explain certain grammatical features also in synchronic morphological structure and that the development of the Latin participles can be modelled unproblematically in a DM-approach. I propose a functional segmentation of participles which concentrates on the interpretative value of the aspectual feature that is morphophonologically realised by -t-. I argue that this feature, at least in Latin, was still nominal in nature and that even in the modern Romance varieties, this aspectual meaning of past participles can clearly be distinguished from what is usually called verbal perfectivity.