Linda,
i would agree with all of that. I think Herb was speculating about whether "closed" should be given the status of adjective. The ability to be qualified with words like "so" or "very" is part of what would make a word a prototypical member of the category. The reason for that is that a typcial adjective is gradeable. The temperature can be "cold" or "very cold." It can get "colder" and we can have the "coldest" day of the year. But "closed," even though it is listed as an adjective in a standard dictionary, seems to resist some of that. It's not as fully gradable as a prototypical adjective. but it does have some gradabllity. It's intweresting that it shows up in some standard constructions,like "closed door session" or "closed shop" or "closed stance" (from golf).
A similar word would be "broken," which is also listed as an adjective in a standard dictionary. As with "closed," we are often more interested in the "state" of something than how it got there. "My watch is broken" is a standard answer when someone asks for the time. The dictionary makers are stuck with the question of whether to list a separate "part of speech" for a word. words like closed, broken, charming, enchanted make the cut.
What do we do with "changed" in "He is changed"? Defeated? Beaten? (He looks defeated. He looks beaten. He seems changed.) One way to test for stative quality is to substitute verbs like "seem" and "look". "The store looks closed."
The point Iwas trying to make in response to Herb (I think very awkwardly) is that we shouldn't shy away from teaching students about the difficulty of drawing sharp lines between categories and about how common it is for words to shift categories over time. Herb is used to making a distinction between what he would tell us about how to understand the language versus what we should pass on to our students at various levels. I have come to appreciate both sides of that over the years.
I'm teaching a grammar class now, as I do every spring, and about one in four students in a very sharp class analyzed "change" in "a change in our plans" as a verb on the quiz I am grading over the weekend. It is a predictable mistake because they have been told over and over again that a verb is an action word and a noun is a person, place, or thing, and those views are persistent. I could make grammar easier by removing fuzzy examples from the mix, but then they will never be able to deal satisfactorily with the real language around them.
The students I teach seem to buy into this kind of complexity precisely because it is based on what we find when we look at the language around us. If anything, they express anger at having been taught an oversimplified grammar in the past.
Why do English teachers underestimate what our students can learn? We have high standards for how they are supposed to behave, but low standards for what they should know.
Craig
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Linda Di Desidero <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, February 15, 2015 8:31 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Passive Voice vs. Copular + Predicate Adjective
Just two more cents toward Herb's suggestion about stativity, as that clearly seems to be the key to this question:
We think of something being closed as an adjective that describes the current state or condition of the thing. We do not think of it as something that has happened or been done to the thing. Even when we talk of something as partially closed, we are referring to the state of the object, not to what has been done to the object. For that reason, viewing "X is closed" as passive seems odd. Better to view it as stative/descriptive.
On the other hand, if you add an agent, the passive view emerges:
The window is closed by me every Wednesday at 2 pm.
In this case, I am not referring to the state of the window so much as the action that is carried out on it.
Linda
Linda Di Desidero, PhD
Director, Leadership Communication Skills Center
Marine Corps University
Gray Research Center, Room 122
Quantico, Virginia 22134
703-784-4401
On Sat, Feb 14, 2015 at 9:38 PM, Hancock, Craig G <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Herb,
I think we can say that something is "partly" or "partially" closed. (window, door, bridge.) My university sometimes "partially closes" and is therefore "partially closed" as a result. (They cancel classes but keep the offices open.) "I didn't see who actually fired the shot because the door was partially closed." We can use "very" before open in some contexts ("He had a very open personality"), but it seems awkward to me in others. ("The window was very open" *?) I think we would probably say "wide open."
You could explain it also as a question of "construal." Someone closed the port, but for a boat approaching from sea, that may be irrelevant. The child who wants to know if he has a snow day doesn't care who closed the school. And, of course, the TV station will give a list of "school closings," which construes the whole action as a "thing." We also have "the close of the show" as an option.
I vote for teaching about prototypes early and often. We do a terrible job with parts of speech in our schools. Students memorize definitions that are close to worthless in application. Certainly, we should teach that the boundaries are not rigid or fixed and that words shift category routinely. Students recognize prototypes for things like furniture or fruit. My experience has been that they enjoy looking at language that way, not least of all because it seems to fit.
Craig
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> on behalf of Stahlke, Herbert <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
Sent: Saturday, February 14, 2015 8:59 PM
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Passive Voice vs. Copular + Predicate Adjective
One of the standard tests for copula+predicate adjective is whether the adjective allows an adverbial modifier. Since “closed” is not gradable, It doesn’t allow “very” or other intensifiers that would show it to be an adjective. The present tense verb suggests a predicate adjective interpretation since “by order of the magistrate” works better than “by the magistrate.” “By order of…” is not an agent phrase and suggests that “closed” here is an adjective. With past tense, “The roads and ports were closed by the magistrate” works as a passive.” We can also have parallel structures, like “During the winter, the roads on the Bruce Peninsula are closed more often than they’re open,” where the parallel between “closed” and “open” suggests that “closed” is an adjective. Using “opened” in the same sentence sounds decidedly odd, since we have a clear morphological distinction between adjective and participle in “open/opened,” which is not the case with “closed.”
On your spin-off question, there is certainly a close relationship between the two. The copular predicate construction has historically been a pathway from verb to adjective, and the example you posted about is a good illustration of the close relationship.
Perhaps the most important upshot of this topic is the recognition that what we call “parts of speech” are, in fact, not discrete categories but rather represent prototypes. The prototypical verb is a transitive, with its agentive subject and a direct object. This type of verb, like “hit,” converts easily into the passive. Stative verbs like “have” do not generally allow passives, hence the oddity of “A good time was had by all,” and stative adjectives, like “tall” do not allow imperatives or progressives. You can say “She is tall,” but not “Be tall” or “She is being tall.” With an active adjective like “kind,” those are both possible: “Be kind!” “She’s being kind.”
I’m not sure I’d spend a lot of time in a writing class explaining prototype theory as it applies to parts of speech even though the concept is useful in answering your question.
Herb
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>] On Behalf Of Larry Barkley
Sent: Saturday, February 14, 2015 3:49 PM
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Passive Voice vs. Copular + Predicate Adjective
Good Afternoon, a colleague and I are debating whether the following sentence exhibits a passive construction or a copular/linking verb and a predicate adjective:
The roads and ports are closed due to the weather conditions.
Observations are (1) the structure is passive, merely missing/excluding the prepositional phrase that would house the actor, e.g. "The roads and ports are closed by the magistrate due to the weather conditions"; (2) the sentence is simply one which exhibits a copular/linking verb, "is," and a predicate adjective, "closed."
But I also have a spin-off question: can both structures exist simultaneously? Is the nature of passive voice to exhibit a copular/linking verb with a predicate adjective?
Thank you.
Best,
Larry
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