Herb, and others,
   I like the way the talk has run, but would just like to put in a vote
for a grammatical explanation rather than just a "levels of formality"
one. If we avoid explanations because our students don't know grammar,
we will never move them forward. We become complicit. Grammar is
reduced to proper behaviour, even when context is mixed in. No one
needs to know grammar because other people will tell you how to act.
   Every school child (at some point) should know that past and present
participles function in adjectival roles and maintain some of their
verb like meaning when they do so. "The scared boy" sounds better than
"the afraid boy" in most contexts. ("frightened" would also work.) It's
sometimes hard to tell which role the word is in.
   He was scared by the dog.
   He was afraid of the dog.
   He was scared of the dog.
   He was scared.
   He was afraid.
   To me, only the third is at issue. But we can make it a discussion
about the wonders of language (and its flexibility), not another
occasion in which their natural language is labelled wrong. The world
thinks of grammarians as language police, and we should resist falling
into that.
   If students aren't ready for a deeper understanding, we should let
their usage be.

Craig


 Linda,
>
> I like your explanation.  This may have influenced why "afraid" has become
> the more formal choice, although I suspect its history has more to do with
> it.  Afraid is the past participle of an archaic 14th c. Anglo-French word
> "affray", meaning "to disturb" or "to startle".  We've lost all the other
> forms of the verb but kept the ppl. as an adjective.  This happens often.
> Who still thinks of "sodden" as the past participle of "seethe"?  We
> relate "molten" to "melt" more easily, but we still don't use "molten" as
> a past participle any more.  "Scare", on the other hand, comes from Old
> Norse through the Viking invasion 400 years earlier and was firmly a part
> of English.  Afraid was a part of upper class, Norman speech and scare a
> part of Anglo-Saxon commoner language.  We have a lot of other pairs that
> show the same sort of history.
>
> Herb
>
>
>
> Intriguing question!
>
> I agree with Herb that it's more a question of speech than of grammatical
> category.
> Now I have my own questions:
>
> Does anyone know if 'afraid' derives from 'afeared'? It would make sense.
> But not knowing this makes the solution easier: Why do we prefer the
> adjective
> over the past participle?
>
> The verb event semantics seem to hold an answer. I think that the  problem
> has more to do with the idea of agency and the way in which we  understand
> the
> verb semantics structurally.
>
> We see "frighten" and "scare" as verbs that require agents (to do the
> frightening and the scaring) and patients as receivers of the emotional
> effect  of
> whatever action causes the state of being frightened or scared.  And I
> think
> that because the idea of agency seems stronger in the context of  'scare'
> than
> 'frighten' (because of usage more than anything else), it seems  odder or
> more
> informal to use 'scare' in the adjectival/passive context in the
> examples.
> One way in which to demonstrate this is to contrast how acceptable it  is
> to
> use the verbs with both animate and inanimate subject arguments: (And note
>  that
> some speakers see no acceptability-difference in these  readings)
>
> The dog frightened me.
> The dog scared me.
> Dogs can be agents, so both sentences are fine.
>
> The picture frightened me.
> ?The picture scared me.
>
> The color frightened me
> ??The color scared me.
>
> In the last two example sets, the 'frighten' sentences are more acceptable
> than the 'scare' sentences because of the stronger degree of agency
> required
> for  'scare'.  This is perceptual, though. The difference may not be
> apparent
> for all speakers of English. Or it may be reversed for some speakers. But
> for
> me, that degree of agency is really clear.  But I think that it is agency
> that is causing the question about these verb usages.  And because
> "afraid"  is
> not readily seen as a past participle, it doesn't have this issue with
> agency.
>
> Being an adjective, "afraid" refers to a state of the subject participant
> in
> the event, and so it seems much more acceptable adjective than the
> verbals.
> It is especially more acceptable than "scared" because that verb requires
> a
> stronger agent than "frighten."
>
> Or so I think!
>
> Linda Di Desidero
>
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