Christine,
I watched as his curtains were always closed (by his maid) whenever I visited
the helpless artist.
I was trying to isolate the fuzziness to a certain domain: semantics or
syntax.
The two domains drive each other. The syntax is how we put the words and
morphemes together. The semantics is how we interpret the arrangement. The
past participle is a syntactic category. The passive voice (in English) seems
to me to be a semantic interpretation. When we are taking the past participle
as an adjective, we are attributing a particular semantic interpretation to
it.
It is like an adjective. If we want to say it is an adjective, which it is
when
we make it gradable (modified by an adverb), we are talking about its syntax,
its derivational morphology. I think this is the way the linguist would
approach
this situation.
Bruce
>>> [log in to unmask] 2/4/2005 7:40:42 AM >>>
Bruce,
I agree that it the distinction is fuzzy or imagined, but isn't that often
the nature of language?
Thanks for your explanation. Let's see if I understood it. I'm a baby
linguist.
I noticed that he curtains were always closed whenever I visited the
reclusive artist.
This is a gradable adjective with an adverb or extent.
Now I'm trying to use curtains and closed in a passive construction and my
mind is blank. Can anyone help?
Christine Martin
--
Christine Reintjes Martin
[log in to unmask]
>From: Bruce Despain <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Past participle as Adjective or Verb
>Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 13:43:54 -0700
>
>Christine & Carol & al.
>
>I wonder if this distinction we make between the passive voice of a verb
>and
>the past participle used as an adjective is more imagined than real. It
>seems
>clear enough that the decision would help us when it came to translating
>our
>sentence into Latin or another language where the passive voice has a
>distinct
>form. Yet even then there are times when their constructions are
>ambiguous.
>The presence of the adverb of extent ("widely") modifying the participle
>makes
>us want to claim that the participle is now an adjective for sure. Still,
>its
>meaning is virtually the same as the agent phrase ("by many people") would
>be,
>so that translation into an active sentence could occur. So the
>distinction
>is
>not so much in the meaning as it is in the syntax. And in English the
>syntactic
>differences are negligible, 1) passive voice is more or less clear when
>there
>is
>an agent phrase, and 2) the past participle as a gradable adjective is
>clear
>when there is an adverb of extent. We're on the borderline when the agent
>phrase looks like a manner phrase or when there is no adverb of extent
>expressed.
>
>Bruce
>
> >>> [log in to unmask] 2/3/2005 1:25:01 PM >>>
>
>Carol,
>
>I asked a similar question last year. One explanation I received was that
>there are two possibilites with the passive construction.
>
>The curtains were closed by the nurse. (Obviously passive voice)
>
>When I entered, the curtains were closed. (More of a description unless the
>action happened just as I entered)
>
>I find this hard to explain to students who are just learning passive
>construction and linking verbs.
>
>
>
>--
>
>Christine Reintjes Martin
>[log in to unmask]
>
>
>
>
> >From: Carol Eisenhower <[log in to unmask]>
> >Reply-To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> ><[log in to unmask]>
> >To: [log in to unmask]
> >Subject: Past participle as Adjective or Verb
> >Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 13:47:01 -0500
> >
> >Hi All
> >I teach a basic grammar class for college freshmen, and the text that
> >I'm using identifies the following sentence as S+LV+SC
> >"Martin Lurther King Jr. was widely admired."
> >To me "was admired" looks like a passive verb phrase similar to the
> >following:
> >"The children were frightened by the monster."
> >Can someone help me with what I'm missing here?
> >Thanks
> >Carol
> >
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>
>
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