Учебник Кобрина. Грамматика. Синтаксис.1999. Учебное пособие для студентов педагогических институтов и университетов по специальности 2103 "Иностранные языки". Спб., Союз, 1999. 496 с
 Скачать 3.61 Mb.
|
THE STATIVE§ 235. The stative denotes a temporary state of a person or a non-person. Unlike such classes of words as nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs the number of statives functioning in English is limited. There are about 30 stable statives, used both in colloquial and in formal style:
and about 100 unstable ones, which are seldom used even in formal style and never in colloquial: ashudder, atwist, atremble, agleam, etc. Semantically statives fall into five groups describing various states of persons or non-persons: 1. Psychological states of persons: afraid, aghast, ashamed, aware, agog. 2. Physical states of persons: alive, awake, asleep. 3. States of motion or activity of persons or non-persons: afoot, astir, afloat, adrift. 4. Physical states of non-persons: afire, aflame, alight, aglow, ablaze. 5. The posture of non-persons: askew, awry, aslant, ajar. Morphological characteristics§ 236. From the point of view of their morphological composition the class of statives is homogeneous, that is all of them have a special marker, the prefix a-: asleep, alive, alone, afire, etc. Note: In English there are some words devoid of the marker -a-, which are semantically and functionally very similar to statives. These are: fond, glad, ill, sorry, well. Their grammatical status is intermediate between that of stative and adjective. As regards their structure, statives with the marker a- fall into two groups: those that can be divided into morphemes (the prefix a- and the stem of a noun, a verb, or an adjective) a-sleep, a-fire, a-glow, and those that cannot be devived because the part following a- does not correspond to any noun, verb, or adjective stem, as in a-loof, a-ware, a-fraid. Statives do not change their form to express concord with the word they refer to. Note: There are other words besides statives with the prefix a-: across, along (adv. and prep.), amidst (prep.), anew (adv.) arise (verb), aloud (adj.), amount (noun), etc. Syntactic function§ 237. Statives may have three functions in a sentence: that of predicative in a compound nominal or a double predicate (the most common function), that of objective predicative, or occasionally that of attribute. When used in the function of predicative statives describe the state of the person or non-person denoted by the subject and are connected with the subject by means of a link verb or in some cases by a notional verb. Statives as predicatives within a compound nominal predicate: He was terribly afraid of his father. The house was ablaze with lights. Soon she fell fast asleep. He seemed afraid to go any further. She felt alert and young. Why do they look so frighteningly alike? The Overlords remained aloof, hiding their faces from mankind. Statives as predicatives within a double predicate: He sat quite alone on that large verandah of his. For a moment she stood aghast, looking at the door. She was lying wide awake listening to all the sounds of the night. She sounded very high and afraid. When they have the function of objective predicative, statives describe the state of the person or non-person denoted by the object: First of all have the fire alight in the drawing room. The large dog kept him afloat until the raft came up. Don’t keep the door ajar. Leave me alone, you fool. I’ll get him awake in a minute. Although the function of attribute is not characteristic of statives, some of them may have this function (either detached or undetached attributes). Statives as undetached attributes are always postmodifying: No man alive could have done it. No one aware of the consequences of his deed would have defied the fate. When used as detached attributes, statives may be either post- or premodifying: The microphone, already alive, was waiting for him. He stood, alert and listening, while the noise from the reef grew steadily around him. Aloof on her mountain-top, she considered the innumerable activities of men. In all these cases the stative retains its predicational force. |