^ F. Grammar notes The Participle

The past participle (passive) and the perfect participle (passive).

(For the present participle see Unit “Banking”).

§ 1. Form. The past participle of regular verbs is formed by adding -ed or -d to the infinitive, e.

§ 2. Use:

• as an adjective: stolen money, a written report, a vexed issue;
• to form the perfect tenses/infinitives and the passive voice: he has reconciled, to have fiddled, it was marked to the market;
• the past participle can replace a subject + passive verb: As he was convinced that they were trying to abuse their rights he compelled them to leave the company. = Convinced that they were trying to abuse their rights he compelled them to leave the company;
• the perfect participle passive (having been + past participle) is used when it is necessary to emphasize that the action expressed by the participle happened before the action expressed by the next verb: Having been warned about the visit of an audit commission, he reconciled all the accounts.

Differences of meaning. A few participles change their meaning according to their position. Compare:

• a concerned expression = a worried expression;
• the people concerned = the people who are/were affected;
• an involved explanation = a complicated explanation;
• the people involved = the people who are/were affected;
• an adopted child = a child who is brought up by people who are not his biological parents;
• the solution adopted = the solution that is/was chosen.

‘Very’ with past participles. When a past participle is used as a gradable adjective, it can usually be modified by very. This is common with words referring to mental states, feelings and reactions.

Common exceptions: much mistaken, well known.

§ 3. Participle constructions:

• object + past participle. In this structure, the past participle has a passive meaning: He wants the report finished by the Annual Meeting;
• ‘have’ + object + past participle. This structure can be used to talk about arranging for things to be done by other people. The past participle has a passive meaning. We have our accounts checked every week;
• ‘get’ + object + past participle. This structure can be used to mean finish doing something. The past participle has a passive meaning. It will take me another hour to get the report written;
• ‘make’ + reflexive object + past participle. In a few cases make can be followed by myself, yourself, etc. and a past participle. The structure is common with understood, heard and liked/disliked/hated. I don’t know English, but I can make myself understood;
• (preposition) + noun + past participle + main sentence: With state pension systems stretched by the ageing of Europe’s population, investors are turning increasingly to mutual funds.

F.l. Identify all the past participle forms in the text “True and fair is not hard and fast” and put them into the appropriate columns.

6. 2. Translate the following sentences into Russian paying attention to the participles.

1. These are the first sets of results produced by companies in America: they are unaudited and do not follow America’s GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles).
2. Since the end of March this year, companies have been compelled to show how they reconcile their pro-forma figures with the numbers subsequently produced according to GAAP rules, of which there are hundreds.
3. These include the “special-purpose entities” made famous by Enron, which gave them the names of suitably fanciful characters in the Star Wars movies.
4. Most significant of all, perhaps, is the attempt to force companies to account for stock options granted to their employees.
5. Yet another goal is to shift the world’s body of accounting standards away from rules (the approach favoured in America) towards principles (more influential in Britain).
6. The hard rules embedded in America’s GAAP have helped devious financiers to design structures that obey the letter of the law but ignore the spirit.
7. As share prices soared, people pointed to the growing gap between the book value of companies (what appeared in their accounts) and their market capitalization (valued on stock exchanges) as evidence of the irrelevance of accounts.

6. 3. Choose a verb from the box to complete the spaces in the article.

called              audited              decided              made              increased

clung              obliged              given              repeated              presented

measured              wild-eyed

Try Revolution, not Evolution

“The Economist”

Closing up some obvious loopholes, bringing in more market valuation and taking away some jargon — these are all important changes.

Regulators also believe that companies should be (3)... to give out new sorts of information. There should be new sections in annual reports on companies’ intangible assets and on “key performance indicators” -- such as employee turnover, customer acquisition cost or inventory turnover. The single most important thing that regulators could do to improve accounts, says Lynn Turner at Colorado State University and a former chief accountant at the SEC, would be to make companies report (4)... key performance indicators.

The company would then have to state in its annual report what percentage of its numbers derive from estimates and what portion are verifiable facts: analysts might choose to apply a discount, reflecting the (5) ... risk, to companies with a high level of estimates. In subsequent years, the company would be (6)... to go back and check how well its estimates had (7)... up to reality, much as governments go back and revise GDP estimates. Over the long run, says Mr. Turner, managers of companies would not be able to get away with (8)... big misses.

Although companies and their auditors pretend that they can work out a single profit figure and a single net-assets number, the truth is that accountants do not know exactly how much money a company has (9)..., nor exactly how much it is worth at any one moment. Realistically, the best they can hope for is a range — “X corporation made somewhere between $ 600 m and $ 800 m” — depending on, for instance, what assumption is (10)... about the likelihood that its customers will pay all the money that they owe.

Throughout the history of accounting, some folk have (11) ... for accounts to be (12)... in the form of ranges. Mr Holgate, for instance, a partner of the world’s largest accounting firm and by no means a (13) ... radical, believes that presenting profits in this way would be much more realistic. For understandable reasons, though, the world has (14)... to the illusion of certainty and exactness.