Breakdown of Взрослые помогли заблудившемуся ребёнку.
ребёнок
child
взрослый
adult
помочь
to help (perfective)
заблудиться
to get lost
Questions & Answers about Взрослые помогли заблудившемуся ребёнку.
How is the participle заблудившемуся formed from the verb заблудиться?
It is an active past participle. To form it, take the past tense stem of the perfective verb заблудиться (заблуди-), add the active past participle suffix -вш-, attach the adjective ending -ему (for dative masculine), and finally add the reflexive particle -ся.
Why is заблудившемуся in the dative case here?
Participles act like adjectives, so they must match the noun they describe in gender, number, and case. The verb помогли (helped) requires its target to be in the dative case, so ребёнку is dative. Therefore, the participle modifying it must also take the dative masculine singular ending -ему.
Why does this participle end in -ся when the vowel у comes right before it? Doesn't the particle usually change to -сь after vowels?
That rule applies to standard verbs (like он заблудился vs она заблудилась). However, for participles, the reflexive particle is always -ся, regardless of whether the preceding letter is a vowel or a consonant.
Взрослые looks like an adjective, so why is it the subject of the sentence?
Взрослые is a substantivized adjective, meaning it is a word that looks and declines exactly like an adjective but functions as a noun. Here, it is in the nominative plural form and translates to the noun adults.