Hi Jed.

 

Let me give you my take on this, and I hope it’s accurate.

 

If we consider that in the Active Mood version of the complement clause (x
cancelled the party) cancel is a transitive verb taking party as the direct
object, we can safely say that was cancelled is the Passive construction of
that active statement.  

 

Another argument against the student’s interpretation could be the fact
that, in terms of semantic roles, party is the theme of the verb cancel
(i.e. what’s being affected by the verb).

 

I’m curious to hear other explanations.

 

-José Santos

 

  _____  

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John E. Dews
Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2006 9:48 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Passive voice vs. adjectival

 

Hi all,

   I have a question about the following sentence:

          He told us that the party was cancelled.

 

   A student of mine was analyzing this sentence and suggested that
cancelled could be seen as an adjectival (a participal functioning as a
predicate adjective). My initial response was that cancelled was simply the
lexical verb in a passive voice verb string with was being the past tense
auxiliary. However, I'm hesitant to "veto" the student's interpretation. Not
to be too Humpty Dumpty about it, but is it plausible to say that cancelled
functions however the student perceives it/means it to function? If he
perceives this structure as a modification of party and NOT as an agentless
passive, then can I accept and validate his interpretation?

!   Thanks for helping me think through this!

     Jed

 

*****************************************************************

John E. Dews 

Instructor, Undergraduate Linguistics

MA-TESOL/Applied Linguistics Program

Educator, Secondary English Language Arts

English Department, 208 Rowand-Johnson Hall (Office)

University of Alabama

 

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