Christine,

 

Here is how I would approch these sentences. 

The adverb "undoubtedly" is placed before "admired," but is a sentence adverb: "Undoubtedly, Martin Luther King, Jr., was admired."  We would not say, "Widely, Martin Luther King, Jr., was admired."  The adverb "widely" is synonymous with "by many people" and is modifying the past participle in much the same way as the prepositional phrase would.  Its form is that of a manner adverb, so the syntax tells me it is modifying a gradable adjective.  An analytic paraphrase would be, "Martin Luther King, Jr., was very much admired."  This loses the distributive meaning but emphasizes its adverbial function of extent.  It is this distributive meaning of the adverb "widely" that makes it so close to the agent interpretation of a "by" phrase.  

Bruce

>>> [log in to unmask] 2/4/2005 7:48:50 AM >>>

Is there a distinction here?

Martin Luther King Jr. was undoubtedly admired.

Martin Luther King Jr. was widely admired (by people throughout the world).

--

Christine Reintjes Martin
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>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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