Do these past-participle phrases function as a predicative adjunct or noun post-modifier?

Question

In the sentences below, the phrases in italic have the direct object "him" as a predicand, and would, I think, be analyzed as predicative (depictive?) adjunct, according to the terminology used in Huddleston&Pullum's Cambridge Grammar:

1a) She found him with his hands tied behind his back.

1b) She found him lying on the bed.

1c) She found him injured.

The use of the past-participle in the sentence below is clearly different, as it forms a syntactic constituent (noun phrase/object) with the preceding noun - "suspects involved in the robbery":

2a) She found the suspects involved in the robbery.

Although superficially similar to examples 1, this sentence obviously has a different syntactic structure.

Now, my problem is that in many cases this difference is not clear to me. For example, I'm not sure how to analyze the past-participial (passive?) phrase in italic in the following sentence:

2b) She found a note left on the table.

or in this one :

2c) The panel addressed numerous issues raised by the US steel exporters.

Answer 1

Sorry for the delayed response. Here's how you would analyze your examples, according to Huddleston and Pullum 2002 and 2005:

She found him lying on the bed.

‘Found him lying on the bed’ is a gerund-participial non-finite clause. It is also a plain-complex catenative construction. The verb ‘find’ here is a catenative verb and it belongs to class 3Cii (HP 2002). ‘Him’ is a direct object and ‘lying on the bed’ is a depictive object-oriented (objective) predicative complement.

She found him injured.

'Him' is a direct object, 'injured' is a depictive object-oriented (objective) predicative complement. 'Find' is a complex-transitive verb here. 'Injured' is an adjective here - it allows modification, e.g. badly/severely injured.

She found a note left on the table.

The past-participle non-finite clause ‘left on the table’ modifies the NP ‘note’ – so it is an adjunct of spatial location (HP 2002, Chapter 8, §4). It is essentially equivalent to a finite relative clause: 'which/that was left on the table'.

She found the suspects involved in the robbery.

‘The suspects’ is a direct object, ‘involved in the robbery’ is a depictive object-oriented (objective) predicative complement. 'Find' is a complex-transitive verb here. 'Involved' is an adjective here - it allows modification, e.g. deeply involved.

Answer 2

According to traditional syntax, these are all participles modifying nouns/pronouns. The difference is that the examples 1a–c are clearly predicative, while 2a is purely attributive (modifying a noun), and 2b–c are somewhere in between.

Compare she came first, he arrived late: first belongs to she syntactically, but it also describes the action. Those are called predicative adjectives. Non-predicative adjectives and participles (which are in a way a kind of adjectives) modify only the noun, whereas predicative adjectives are said to modify both the verb and the noun the belong to. The distinction between predicative and non-predicative adjectives is necessarily a bit vague, as can be seen in 2b and 2c, but it can be useful.

Another thing is that attributive adjectives can be defining and non-defining, just like relative clauses (the table that I bought v. the table, which I bought). When a postpositional participle is non-defining, a comma is usually added. Example 2a is a good example of a defining adjective/participle.