# Norwegian: Alle mennesker er født frie og like i verdighet og rettigheter



## kvajak

*I've got a sentence from "**omniglot."** It's "Alle mennesker er født frie og like i verdighet og rettigheter." *


*Is that right? Is "født" here an adjective or past participle? "Alle mennesker" is an indefinite plural form, and why not use "fødte" here? If it is a **past participle**, then is there a structure of passive like "er + pp."? I just know very simple Norwegian grammar, and I wonder about that.*


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## elroy

As far as I know, predicative adjectives are not inflected in Norwegian, so it would be _født_ regardless of gender and number.

It is technically a past participle (from the verb _føde_), but in this context it is just used as a regular adjective: "All men are _born_ free..."


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## arnejan

født means born and represents the past participle.


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## kvajak

elroy said:


> As far as I know, predicative adjectives are not inflected in Norwegian, so it would be _født_ regardless of gender and number.
> 
> It is technically a past participle (from the verb _føde_), but in this context it is just used as a regular adjective: "All men are _born_ free..."


 
no,the predicative adjectives should be in the same gender and numeral to the nouns that they are referred to.


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## kvajak

arnejan said:


> født means born and represents the past participle.


 
ah, you are a native speaker, nee? good, thanks! but "født" here can also be recognized as an adjective, then why needn't it to be inflected?


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## Setwale_Charm

I am not well acquainted with these rules but "født" is definitely not an adjective here, it is a participle. *Et født barn* would use it as an adjective.
Plus. I have never seen *født* or *född* change when it is used as a participle in any of the Scandinavian languages.

Regards,


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## elroy

Participles are adjectives.


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## kvajak

to elroy: man can just see that as an adjective...
to S.Charm: the correspondent sentence of swedish is "Alla människor är födda ..." so here "födda" must be the indefinite plural form of the adjective "född", nee?


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## elroy

kvajak said:


> to elroy: man can just see that as an adjective...


 Let me explain.

It is a participle.  There is no doubt about that, as I said in my first post.

However, _er født _is neither a passive-voice construction nor a perfect verb tense.  In Norwegian, the passive voice is formed with the verb _bli_ and not _være _(except with modals, which allow another construction, but that's irrelevant here); and the perfect tenses are formed with the verb _ha_.  Those are the two situations in which a participle (which is fundamentally an adjective) does not function adjectivally but is considered part of the verb.

Since neither of the above situations apply, we can conclude that _født_ behaves like an adjective here. 

That's the way I see it, at least.


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## kvajak

yes, all what you said I´ve already known. What I don´t understand is that why the adjective _født_ here needn´t to be inflected? Do you understand what I said???


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## Lemminkäinen

I can't answer that question, I'm afraid, but just want to point out that the adjectives *frie* and *like* are in the plural.


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## sigjak

Finn-Erik Vinje: "Norsk grammatikk - det språklige byggverket":


> (s.108) Et perfektpartisipp som sammen med hjelpeverbene 'være' eller 'bli' utgjør en enhetsforbindelse, ender nesten alltid på -t; kongruensbøyningen er altså opphevet: _benkene er malt av gartneren; barna er funnet i god behold; dørene blir alltid lukket av vaktmesteren._
> Men når handlingsmomentet trer i bakgrunnen og partisippet har tilstands- eller egenskapsbetydning, blir det gjerne bøyd. (...)
> _disse potetene er *kokt* i et kvarter_
> _disse potetene er *kokte*, ikke stekte_


Vinje regner partisipper i denne sammenheng som "verbavledede adjektiver"


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