Adverb following linking verb

[corum]

“location is attributed to the referent of the subject and the verb is copular.”

Any particular reason for saying 'the verb is copular'? Does it couple any more than: 'I read a book in bed.'? Does 'in bed' modify 'book', 'I' or 'read'? Do you know why a verb is called copular?

Here is a non-copular use of 'be' in its durative, existential aspect:

I am.

I presume, without wishing to go off at a totally philosophical tangent, that anything that 'is', 'is' somewhere, in a location. From there comes the sense of 'be in' OE wesan, Spanish 'estar' Chinese '在 zai'.

Now qualify it for location:

I am in London. 'in London' is an adverbial of place cf 'I live in London.'

Either the adverbial is a modifier of the verb or the pronoun. There is evidence for the latter. Cf African American: Where you at? We at the store. But in English, we don't usually have adverbial modifiers of personal pronouns. So I would choose the adverbial as a verb modifier.

Hello Pedro,

I took a shufty at your post and I am going to come back in due course. I have to go to work now.

 

[Pedroski]

I wish you wouldn't use four letter words like that! 'work' is not a word one uses in polite circles!

 

[philo2009]

'Copular', yes; but the following sentences are examples of non-copular uses:

• The meeting will be (held) on the fifth of February.
• He is (located) here.

You appear to be under the impression that the ability to arbitrarily insert supposedly 'missing' participles into the sentence without substantively changing the meaning constitutes some kind of proof that 'be' here is an auxiliary rather than a full copula, whereas all that you have done is change the structure to fit your argument.

Let us look at your 'improved' versions one by one.

Firstly, you imply that

[1] The meeting will be on February 5th.

is actually elliptical for

[2] The meeting will be held on February 5th.

Setting aside, for the moment, the fact that we normally resort to ellipsis as an analytical method only where the original sentence fails to be explicable in terms of normal syntactic relations (patently not the case here), let us indulge your theory for the sake of argument and attempt to determine whether there is true semantic equivalence between [1] and [2].

First off, if we are to accept the premise that participle 'held' is always insertable in statements of this type, then we should presumably be able to change well-formed

[3] The party is tomorrow.

into

[4] ?The party is held tomorrow.

Oh dear, doesn't seem to work terribly well, does it? Apparently, we would need a participial to-infinitive in this case, viz.

[5] The party is to be held tomorrow.

OK, so if what is actually missing is a to-infinitive, it should be possible - nay, obligatory, by your lights! - for us to transform [1] into

[6] ??The meeting will be to be held on February 5th.

Just gets worse and worse, doesn't it?! And the reason? Your original theory is nonsense, since in reality nothing whatever has been omitted from the original, in which the verb 'be', as previously stated, functions as a full copular verb with adverbial complement, a standard, not remotely deviant, analysis according to syntactic norms, from which we need never have departed in the first place.

Next, we have

[7] He is here.

, supposedly some kind of lazy "abbreviation" of

[8] He is located here.

Another fact about ellipses that you seem to have overlooked is that they are generally supposed to be, if anything, more - not considerably less - natural than their abridgments. When we hear one we should - if it is valid - automatically have the comfortable feeling that this really is the restored, full form of the sentence.

I can only presume, then, that you are in the habit of having telephone conversations such as the following:

A: John, where are you located at the moment?
B: I'm located at Mary's. Where are you located?
A: I'm located at the supermarket.
B: But I thought you were supposed to be located at work today!
A: Nah, I was located at work this morning, but then I found that the files I needed weren't located on my desk where I thought they were located, and then, on my way back home to collect them, I saw that there were some great bargains located at the supermarket....

Hmm, very natural!

So, on balance, I think it's safe to assert that your missing participles here are a figment of your imagination!


PHILO

(Located in Japan)

 

[philo2009]

I don't know...in fact, the same word.

Look, Pedro, all of this nonsense could be avoided if you would simply take the trouble to open a decent grammar book, or even a dictionary, and familiarize yourself with the accepted DEFINITION (not my personal opinion or pet theory!) of the term 'copular verb' (a.k.a. "linking verb").

Here, for example, is Collins' entry (Millennium edition, p.352):

COPULA (n.) 1. a verb, such as be, seem or taste, that is used merely to identify or link the subject with the complement of a sentence. Copulas may serve to link nouns (or pronouns), as in He became king,...or nouns (or pronouns) and adverbial complements, as John is in jail.

(my bold type)

Now, do I really have to go on any further?

 

[corum]

I wish you wouldn't use four letter words like that! 'work' is not a word one uses in polite circles!

I thought it was comme il faut, as I was addressing someone who does not belong there. ;-)
I leave it to Philo to knock some sense into you.

 

[philo2009]

I thought it was comme il faut, as I was addressing someone who does not belong there. ;-)
I leave it to Philo to knock some sense into you.

Thank you, Corum.
Done - I trust!
:-D

 

[Pedroski]

I don't think I said 'be' was an auxiliary. I thought I said, leave aside 'be' as an auxiliary for the mo.

So: a copular verb is just sort of stuck in the sentence, doing nothing in particular, just 'linking' a personal pronoun, for example, with, for example, an adverbial. Why not just write 'I here.'? The verb 'be', when it's not an auxiliary 'be' has only this function. 'be' is never an intransitive verb.

A language like Swedish, which has 'vara' copular be, 'bli' become and 'finnas' be found in, exist, is just wasting its time, they might just as well use 'be' for everything, then there is no difference in meaning between the three usages? These usages couldn't, for example, correspond with OE verbs jumbled up in the paradigm of Modern English 'be'. 'be is just a waste of space.

Does that sum up your thoughts?

Which is correct: 'I think, therefore I.' or 'I think therefore I am.' If the latter, what is coupled to 'I'?

 

[philo2009]

. 'be is just a waste of space.

Does that sum up your thoughts?

Actually, no.

My thoughts can best be summed up as follows: the English verb 'be', when complemented by a substantive, an adjective or an adverbial, is by definition functioning as a copular verb - something you seem pathologically unable to accept.

I would, however, contend that the above-cited post is a complete waste of space in this forum: unless you have a more relevant and coherent set of counter-arguments to present, you are simply wasting my and everyone else's time.

The original question has been comprehensively answered, and I have nothing further to add.

- End of Contribution to Current Thread -

 

[Pedroski]

By 'couple an adverb to a personal pronoun', do you intend to say, the adverb modifies the pronoun, say, in the manner an adjective may? Because, in English, we don't often have adverbial modifiers of personal pronouns.
You seem utterly unable to consider that you can't couple an adverb to a personal pronoun, at least not when a verb is between them. You have heard, I suppose, that adverbs mostly modify verbs? If your definition of copular does not take this into account, then there you have your problem in grasping the difference.

I'll try another tack, see if I can sway you:

1) The verb 'be has different senses: 'be' = exist, 'be' = be in, and 'be' = become. cf. 'I run a mile every day.' 'I run a business every day.' 'run' spelt exactly the same in both is however different in each sentence. This is also true, after its fashion, of 'be' sentences.

2) Consider the difference between:

'They left happy.' and 'They left happily.' One is copular, the other tells us how they left. One has an adjective, the other an adverb.

3) Copular sentences are closely related to small clauses. See which of the following you don't like, and why:

I consider John a murderer.
I consider John handsome.
I consider John here.

 

[corum]

Done - I trust!

Definition of There's no rest for the wicked. from Cambridge Dictionary Online: Free English Dictionary and Thesaurus

something you seem pathologically unable to accept.

:-D