Romanian passive participles as complements of perception verbs

This article discusses the Romanian non-finite verbal forms which are complements of direct perception verbs: the gerundial and the past participle structures. The focus is on one restriction which the gerund displays, i.e. the fact that the passive morpheme fiind ‘being’ is ruled out after a direct perception verb, and the consequences thereof. Since the passive morpheme is absent from the direct perception configuration, the past participle encodes the passive event on its own. A series of diagnostic tests are applied in order to disambiguate between the passive past participle’s verbal (eventive) and its adjectival (resultative) use.