> She was supposed to be elated.
>
>I would disagree that "is supposed" is a passive construction in this
>sentence, if for no other reason than intuitively I would say there is no
>hidden agent;  nothing "supposed" her.
 
If 'is supposed' is not passive - what else could it be? 'Supposed' would
have to be an adjective, which doesn't make much sense.
 
>I agree that "supposed to" is one of many quasi-modals, as linguists have
>often called them, in English.
 
Semi-modals, quasi-modals - it is unclear what makes 'supposed to' belong to
this class. And what defines this class? Meaning? Form? As long as there is
no clear definition of what is what, such a term is not helpful, it does not
explain anything.
 
 Note that many people will use "supposed
>to" in fragment form, indicating that the two words are bound together
>probably as a single morpheme.
 
Not exactly a single MORPHEME - there are at least three or four in
'supposed to', but a collocation all right, i.e. a combination whose
elements tend to co-occur(Halliday).
 
> For instance, I've often heard people
>respond to a question about why somebody has to do something with "I'm
>supposed to."  I don't see that this fragment would be acceptable if "to"
>were an infinitive linked w/ "be" rather than "supposed".
 
But you can always set the rest of a to-infinitive sentence zero:
 
I'm supposed to 0
I want to 0
I'm not going to 0
He is to 0
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Burkhard Leuschner - Paedagogische Hochschule Schwaebisch Gmuend, Germany
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