Terry Irons wrote:
>
>There are some uses in which "is supposed to be" is a passive sentence,
>such as
>
>The defendant was supposed to be innocent.
 
Agreed, this is a passive sentence.
 
>In the passive use, however, there is an intonation contour in which the
>second syllable of "supposed" lengthens.
 
If this is so (I'm not a native speaker), I never noticed it. Do other
people confirm this? And could you tell me more details about the difference?
 
 
>The sentence, "She was supposed to be elated," does not have the passive
>sense in my use.  It is not a case of someone supposing her to be
>elated.  Here "was supposed" is a synonym of some kind for "should."
 
Structurally, this is still a passive sentence. Semantically, 'be supposed
to' as a whole has taken on a new meaning, namely something very similar to
the meaning of 'should', but there is always the idea of some authority
behind it, someone who has decided that he wants us to do something in a
certain way. 'be supposed to' in this usage then is a collocation with a
metaphorical meaning (some might call it idiomatic meaning and then call the
whole entitiy an 'idiom').
 
We should not mix up (we are not supposed to? - nope) structural and
semantic points. Thus even if there is some similarity in meaning between
'should' and 'be supposed to', this does not make the latter into some kind
of auxiliary.
 
 
>A test for the difference is to insert the following kind of phrase--"was
>going to be."  If the sentence is passive, it should be possible to
>insert such a phrase.
 
The test then (good idea) shows whether we are having to do with the regular
'suppose' or the metaphorical collocation.
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Burkhard Leuschner - Paedagogische Hochschule Schwaebisch Gmuend, Germany
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