Can someone explain to me what a present middle/passive participle is?

Question

What is it?

Answer 1

In Greek? I don't know Greek, but I looked this up, because it seemed interesting...

Voice refers to the relationship between the action in the sentence and the subject of the sentence.

In an active sentence, the subject does the action. (John kicks the ball.)

In a passive sentence, the subject "receives" the action, or has the action done to it (him/her/them). (The ball is kicked (by John).)

In a "middle" sentence (which we don't distinguish from active in English, but they normally involve reflexive pronouns--myself, themselves, etc), the subject both does and receives the action. (John kicked himself.)

Apparently, in Greek, (this is the bit I had to look up) many verbs have the same form for passive and middle, although they're still considered different voices--I assume this is similar to how in English a word like "hit" is both present and past. So the middle/passive would be the form that's the same for those two.

The present participle is the -ing form in English (-ant form in French, -ende form in German, if that helps---I have no idea what it is in Greek though). It expresses the "ongoingness" of an action at a given time.

Evidently, the present middle/passive particle, then, is the form used for expressing the ongoingness of an action performed on, or by-and-on, the speaker. (There's nothing remotely like that in English!)

Answer 2

In linguistics, a participle is a verb form that can be used in compound tenses or in the passive form.
To describe a progressive action (an action that is or was taking place) one uses the present participle which always ends in -ing.
He is sleeping (now)
He was sleeping (as in "he was asleep") when the phone rang.

The past or passive participle is used for something that is completely finished. and can have either an -ed or an -en ending.
He has looked at the map.
The children have eaten all the cakes
Passive:
He was examined by the doctor.
The cakes were eaten by the children.

Irregular verbs may have different past participles for instance :
To buy:bought
He has bought his car last week
To sing: sung
The service was sung in Latin.
To think: thought
They had thought about everything
etc....
There is only one way to remember those and that is to learn them by heart. and use them!
I hope it makes things clearer for you.

Answer 3

present participle = verb basis + -ing
past/passive participle = 3rd column or verb basis + -ed