A practical english grammar - Vyssaja skola 1978
Participles as modifiers
Sound symbols
Participles (present as well as past) may act as noun modifiers, occurring either before or after the noun. Participles that are part of complex phrases almost always follow the noun, as do all kinds of modifiers when they are themselves part of larger structures:
Present participles:
a falling star
a hawk circling slowly in the sky overhead
Past participles:
faded cloth
cloth bleached by the sun
the risen sun
I he present participle has an active meaning; that is, the modified noun is the actor in the situation described by the construction. The past participle has a passive meaning if it is derived from a transitive verb (one that takes a direct object) or an active, past meaning if derived from an intransitive verb.
There are many combinations of nouns and other parts of speech and present participles to make compound modifiers. Nouns so compounded are usually the object of the participle:
a man-eating tiger fur-bearing animals
a self-perpetuating problem tree-dwelling creatures
a fast-changing situation
Various expressions combine with past participles also; nouns often express the agent when the meaning is passive:
sun-dried brick (brick dried by the sun)
handwritten document (document written by hand)
A kind of pseudo-participle is often made from nouns and an attributive adjective in English. The noun has the ending -ed as though it were a verb:
a blue-eyed girl a short-haired dog
a broad-brimmed hat
Occasionally, numerals function this way, too: a six-sided figure.
Adjectives that resemble participles. Participles, that is, verbal modifiers of nouns, can not ordinarily be modified by such intensifiers as very or quite, nor can they follow linking verbs. However, there is a special category of words ending in -ing derived from status verbs (see Chapter 5) which behave like true adjectives and can be used in all the ways that beautiful or unusual, for instance, can be used.
a very charming girl She is quite charming.
an extremely annoying habit That habit is very annoying.
a very interesting book That book is quite interesting.
Adjectives in -ed derived from status verbs may also be used with intensifiers, though they do not occur as frequently before their nouns as those in -ing do.
I am quite moved by your appeal.
They seem very confused.
I was somewhat amazed by his answer.