On open/opened

[Rudolph C Troike]

Thanks to Dave Barnhart (off-list) and Doug Wilson for comments on the
"open/closed" asymmetry. I'll have to ask a German speaker whether
"offen" can be used predicatively in contrast to "geo:offnet".
        Re Doug's example of
                The door is open.
                The door is opened.
(and attributive uses "the open window"/"the opened window"), I find a
pure stative use in the first case, and a resultative sense in the second.
The door or window may be open permanently or not, but the emphasis is on
the state. The "opened" suggests the result of a recent action (or may be
part of a sentence indicating the means for accomplishing this result).
        Incidentally, note that this distinction becomes much more
strongly evident in the past tense:

                The window was open.   [when I came in.]
                The window was opened. [Poirot noted.]

        With "closed", no such distinction is possible, so it is more
ambiguous than "open", at least potentially. The examples that Doug cites
for "close" as an attributive look more like forms that may have just lost
their /d/ rather than genuine original uses of a pure adjective "close".
(Of course we have one spelled that way, but the meaning is different,
though etymologically related.) I imagine, without checking, that the
"-en" on "open" is an old causative suffix (thicken, darken, etc.), as one
does find the verb "ope" in Shakespeare, but the suffix obviously goes
back to Germanic times, and "ope" may be a back-formation.
        Note, incidentally, the contrast in the lexical negative (where
* = ungrammatical). Larry?

                The jar is *unopen/unopened.
                The unopen/unopened jar.

        Rudy