Past participle following imparfait

Question

Why do we use the past participle "occupés" after "semblaient" in the third sentence. Why isn't it in the infinitive "occuper"?

Accepted Answer

Hi Rebekah,
Just to add to Maarten’s answer, here, ‘occupés’ (busy) is an attribute adjective which refers to the verb of state ‘sembler’ (rather than two verbs following each other).
It could have been -

Ils semblaient impatients =They seemed impatient
Ils semblaient heureux = They seemed happy

Here is a link to the Kwiziq list ( not exhaustive) of verbs of state -
https://french.kwiziq.com/learn/theme/1512981
 
Hope this helps!

Answer

This is past participle as adjective - “the ants seemed (to be) busy carrying etc”Try another adjective that isn’t a past participle in place of “busy” to check - eg “the ants seemed (to be) slow carrying . . .”