Craig,
I'm sorry to continue disagreeing with you, but there is much more of a
difference between 'George is a jerk' and 'George is being a jerk' than
just progressive aspect. It implies that George is doing something -- is
acting -- in such a way as to put himself into the 'jerk' category. We
definitely understand from this that George is not typically a jerk, or
not always a jerk, but there is a sense of deliberate agency that is
lacking from the present tense version. This is a favorite way of
scolding or correcting someone -- 'stop being silly!' 'So be that way!'
You are referring to someone's deliberate action. As I said before,
that's why we have the special 'be' that can occur in progressive
aspect. You wouldn't say "the child is being sick" unless the child is
faking (or you were British and the child was throwing up). I would
almost want to give this 'be' a separate dictionary entry! 'George is a
jerk' is synonmous with 'George is a member of the category jerk' but
'George is being a jerk' is synonmous with 'George is acting like a
member of the category jerk'.
You write, "But Bessie is a [member of the set] cow and Bessie is being
a cow are not recursive in the same way. (We do not want to say Cow is
a member of the set Bessie or A cow is being Bessie. We have violated
the meaning in a substantial way.)" Precisely my point: one noun phrase
names the role, and the other names the token. That's the semantic
violation. A set cannot be a member of a token, because a token isn't a set!
What's the need for an explanation beyond the role/token assignment plus
information structure? It seems to me that these ideas would help
students, not confuse them. Calling them active/passive would confuse
them, I think. Plus, I think the info. structure explanation is the
correct one.
You also understood what I said about the action of assigning being that
of the speaker, the formulator of the sentence, but in your prior posts
you have been attributing this agency to the subject of the sentence,
not the speaker, hence identifying the role-as-subject and
token-as-object version as a sort of passive.
There's a lot more to say, but I have to go home ...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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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