Sorry: I meant the
VERB in the clause, not the VERY! So my message should have read as
follows:
Bruce's example of a
sentence intended to impart the present state of the party might be made even
clearer if the verb in the clause is
put in the present tense:
When I asked him
about the schedule for today, he told us that the party is
cancelled.
Now cancelled is
truly an adjectival subject complement, as locked is in I can't get
in; the door is locked.
Jed,
My own sense of the language makes me want to be more precise in the
tense-aspect setting of the sentence you quote. In my mind the simple past
tense in "was cancelled" seems to be placing it at some definite time in the
past:
He told us that when the committee met the party was
cancelled.
This would be distinct from the probable intended meaning of
the sentence that would be more precisely expressed:
He told us that party had been cancelled.
Both these sentences are passives; the action was performed to bring the
party into this state. However, if the topic and interest in making the
statement is to impart the present state of the party without reference to the
action that brought it about, then the predicate adjective would be the natural
interpretation:
When I asked him about the schedule for today, he told us
that the party was cancelled.
The line between the two interpretations is fine, especially when there is
no context against which to make the judgement.
Bruce
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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