My grammar book told me that when a participle functions as an adjective, normally it should be used before nouns. But I still saw some sentences like:
The experience gained will be of great value to us.
They decided to change the material used.
(And they also said, the meaning is different with the prepositive"used" here means something which is used nowadays, but the prepositive one means second-hand)
When can we put participles after nouns and these different meanings of participles can be predicatives?
Best Answer
Past participle verbs postmodifying nouns are non-finite clauses, not adjectives, not predicatives. So in your first example "gained" is a past-participial clause postmodifying "experience". Past-participial modifiers are 'bare' passives as evident from the admissibility of a by phrase in complement function. Semantically they are similar to relative clauses, cf. "The experience which was gained ..." The same applies to "used"; as a postmodifier it's a verb heading a past-participial clause modifying "materials". As an adjective, "used" is unusual in having a secondary meaning, second-hand.