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