the genitive case, an active voice structure is preferred: Pilietinė visuomenė turi būti skatinama vyriausybės. → (more common) Vyriausybė turi skatinti pilietinę visuomenę. – A civil society should be promoted by the government. → The government should promote a civil society. Participles Lithuanian retains a rich system of participles, fourteen in total. In contrast English contains just two: the present participle ("the eating cow") and the past participle ("the eaten cow"). Adjectival participles decline as adjectives, while adverbial participles are not declined.. In Lithuanian participles are very important part of every type of speech. All of them have their own function, but not all are used equally often. Adjectival participles Adjectival participles have all the adjectival characteristics: three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), pronominal forms, mostly identical declension and sometimes even degrees of comparison. Their primary function is to describe a nominal part of speech (usually a noun), like any adjective would in their position, hence they are matched by gender, case and number with the noun they are describing. They can be active or passive. In the following tables only nominative case forms are given. The verb used is baĩgti (to finish). Active (non pronominal forms): {| class="wikitable" !!!colspan="3"|Simple !colspan="3"|Reflexive |- !!!Masculine||Feminine||Neuter||Masculine||Feminine||Neuter |- !Present |baigią̃s / baĩgiantis||baĩgianti||baigią̃||besibaigią̃s / besibaĩgiantis / baĩgiąsis||besibaĩgianti / baĩgiantis||besibaigią̃ / baigią̃si |- !Past |baĩgęs||baĩgusi||baĩgę||baĩgęsis||baĩgusis||baĩgęsi |- !Past iterative |baĩgdavęs||baĩgdavusi||baĩgdavę||baĩgdavęsis||baĩgdavusis||baĩgdavęsi |- !Future |baigsią̃s / baĩgsiantis||baĩgsianti||baigsią̃||baĩgsiąsis||baĩgsiantis||baĩgsiąsi |} Active (pronominal counterparts): {| class="wikitable" !!!colspan="3"|Simple !colspan="3"|Reflexive |- !!!Masculine||Feminine||Neuter||Masculine||Feminine||Neuter |- !Present |baigiantỹsis||baigiančióji||–||besibaigiantỹsis||besibaigiančióji||– |- !Past |baigusỹsis||baigusióji||–||(pa)sibaigusỹsis1||(pa)sibaigusióji1||– |- !Past iterative |–||–||–||–||–||– |- !Future |baigsiantỹsis||baigsiančióji||–||(pa)sibaigsiantỹsis1||(pa)sibaigsiančióji1||– |} 1This form only exists for verbs with prefixes (except for be-). One of the main functions of active participles is to describe a characteristic of a noun related to some ongoing, past or future action in which the said noun is the agent: migruojantys paukščiai – migrating birds, nepatyręs vairuotojas – inexperienced driver, pablogėsiančios darbo sąlygos – working conditions that will worsen. Only present, past simple and future active participles can fulfill this function. Another function of active participles is to describe a secondary action performed by the sentence subject before the main action: Atidariusi langą mergina grožėjosi tekančia saule. – Having opened the window, the girl admired the sunrise. This function is limited to the past simple participle and is one of its most common uses. If there is a need to describe a secondary action performed by the sentence subject at the same time as the main