The original explanation of 'with' marking INSTRUMENTS in passives 
explains "the essay was written with a pencil" and "his heart was 
swollen with sorrow", where the agent would be the person or event 
causing the sorrow. An event agent might be marked with 'at: "his heart 
was swollen with sorrow at his brother's death". Sounds weird to me, but 
putting anything after 'with sorrow' sounds weird to me, because I do 
get the adjectival reading as the default.

The structure is ambiguous, though; we can use an adverb test that is 
about as clumsy but also about as adequate as the 'very' test:

"His heart was gradually swollen with sorrow". To get the verbal 
reading, you need to conceive of the swelling as a process, not a final 
state. This is a subtle matter of whether or not you include in the 
meaning a sort of frame-by-frame view of the process, including the 
final state, or put the frame-by-frame into the background or eliminate 
it altogether, and conceive only of the final state of the process. This 
is how Cognitive Grammar would explain it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue  • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184  •  Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone.  756-2596
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] •      Home page: 
http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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