> She was supposed to be elated. > >I would disagree that "is supposed" is a passive construction in this >sentence, if for no other reason than intuitively I would say there is no >hidden agent; nothing "supposed" her. If 'is supposed' is not passive - what else could it be? 'Supposed' would have to be an adjective, which doesn't make much sense. >I agree that "supposed to" is one of many quasi-modals, as linguists have >often called them, in English. Semi-modals, quasi-modals - it is unclear what makes 'supposed to' belong to this class. And what defines this class? Meaning? Form? As long as there is no clear definition of what is what, such a term is not helpful, it does not explain anything. Note that many people will use "supposed >to" in fragment form, indicating that the two words are bound together >probably as a single morpheme. Not exactly a single MORPHEME - there are at least three or four in 'supposed to', but a collocation all right, i.e. a combination whose elements tend to co-occur(Halliday). > For instance, I've often heard people >respond to a question about why somebody has to do something with "I'm >supposed to." I don't see that this fragment would be acceptable if "to" >were an infinitive linked w/ "be" rather than "supposed". But you can always set the rest of a to-infinitive sentence zero: I'm supposed to 0 I want to 0 I'm not going to 0 He is to 0 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Burkhard Leuschner - Paedagogische Hochschule Schwaebisch Gmuend, Germany E-mail: [log in to unmask] Fax: +49 7383 2212