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In a construction such as, "John is disappointed with Alice", what part of speech is disappointed with? It appears to me that the "am" is a linking verb.

Similarly, "Jessica is sad", it seems to me that "sad" is the same part of speech as disappointed with.

One paper I'm reading claims that these are adverbs, but I am pretty sure this isn't the case, as "disappointed" doesn't describe "is". They feel like adjectives, but yet it's not assembled like a typical adjective would be ("Sad Jessica").

tchrist
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Irwin
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    Sorry, I initially had "I am", then decided to change it to a third-person form and forgot to change the verb. Yes, it is a real question. It has been edited. – Irwin May 04 '13 at 23:14
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    Put down that paper, Irwin! It's dangerous. Disappointed and sad are indeed adjectives, predicate adjectives: adjectives which serve as complements of a copular verb. – StoneyB on hiatus May 05 '13 at 00:30
  • I need to review this paper and want to indicate the mistake along with the correction! Hence my question! – Irwin May 05 '13 at 14:53

2 Answers2

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People write papers about parts of speech? Good heavens.

First, yes, be is always an auxiliary verb. Even if it's the only verb in the clause; the lexical item following be in that case is the real predicate.

(Not a "linking verb", btw; that's grade school stuff, like "5 take away 2")

And disappointed is indeed an adjective -- a predicate adjective since it takes an auxiliary be. It's what's called a "psych predicate", because it refers to a mental state of the subject. Like angry, scared, frightened, mad, surprised, etc.

Since almost all predicate adjectives are intransitive, they can't take objects. However, they can be transitivized with prepositions. The prepositional phrase indicates the stimulus that has caused the mental state to the subject. But the prepositions vary; they're determined by the predicate, as usual.

  • I'm disappointed. ~ I'm disappointed at Max. ~ I'm disappointed with Max.
  • I'm angry. ~ I'm angry at Max. ~ I'm angry with Max. ~ *I'm angry of Max.
  • I'm mad. ~ I'm mad at Max. ~ *I'm mad with Max. ~ *I'm mad of Max.
  • I'm scared. ~ *I'm scared at Max. ~ *I'm scared with Max. ~ I'm scared of Max.
  • I'm surprised ~ I'm surprised at Max. ~ *I'm surprised with Max. ~ *I'm surprised of Max.

Psych predicates are also called "Flip predicates" in the literature because they invert the usual roles of the subject as agent and the object as patient (Bill hit Max), instead flipping the subject to patient role, with the prepositional object functioning as cause, if not always agent.

Psych predicates are often formed from past participles (like disappointed and scared) so they have the same form as passive, but they have to be distinguished from them because they don't allow agent by-phrases and they don't refer to an event, but rather a state. I.e, the two sentences below don't mean the same thing.

  • Bill was scared by Max. (an event; passive verb)
  • Bill was scared of Max. (a mental state; psych predicate adjective)
John Lawler
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  • "Be is always an auxiliary verb" - this bit of prescriptivism does not reflect the way people actually talk, including lots of academics, even linguists. Unless you didn't mean what I thought you meant. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica May 05 '13 at 15:25
  • It's not prescriptive; it's just a fact. Be behaves exactly like an auxiliary verb in every sentence it occurs in: it's totally irregular in inflection, it inverts with the subject in questions and negatives, it contracts with the subject, it requires a lexical predicate following it. It never behaves like a lexical predicate; it always behaves like a piece of grammar; i.e, it's an auxiliary. If you want to call it something else for doctrinal reasons, that would be prescriptive. – John Lawler May 05 '13 at 15:57
  • Prescriptiveness is when you try to make people use a word in a way that is different from how they actually use it. You may be doing that. Secondly, you claim that the word is used in a certain way by most people or whatever, while in fact it is not. Lastly, there are no "facts" in linguistics: only models and definitions. It so happens that, to most people, an auxiliary verb is by definition one that supports another verb, like a participle. I presume you would even call "have you any kids?" an auxiliary, which I assure you is not considered one by the (very) large majority. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica May 05 '13 at 17:33
  • Have you any kids? is not American English. We'd understand it (we all watch the BBC and read English novels :-), but it would be unusual to hear it in an American mouth. What's happened is that the auxiliary have behaves like an auxiliary, natch, while the lexical 'possess' have takes Do-support (Do you have?) and doesn't contract (*I've three). – John Lawler May 05 '13 at 17:47
  • I don't care how other people use the term, frankly, but I do use it in a consistent way. Your mileage may vary, but if you want to understand what I'm saying, that's the way you should interpret it. Insisting on interpreting it some other way seems like putting somebody else's words in my mouth. – John Lawler May 05 '13 at 17:48
  • I have absolutely no problem with your choosing one model or other. I can see the benefits of this particular one. I only object to the way it is stated as an uncontroversial, absolute truth. "Be is always an auxiliary verb" sounds like that, without any qualifications. I usually try to include disclaimers in a question when I think you might not agree with my terminology. // About have you any kids / I've three kids, what would you call it? Auxiliary or no? I am aware of the fact that this is not or rarely used in (most dialects of?) American English. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica May 05 '13 at 20:05
  • Let me just say that, whether it approaches Socratic Truth or not, that's the way to bet. You'll never make a grammatical mistake if you treat every instance of be as if it were an auxiliary verb, whatever you'd prefer to call it. That is all. I get accused of being too technical, and when I try to avoid footnotes, I get called on trivia. There is a definition of auxiliary verb in English; it's different for other languages. Including Latin and Middle and Old English. – John Lawler May 05 '13 at 20:44
  • There are apparently many definitions in English alone, so I don't think the issue is other languages here. If ques/neg inversion is essential, you could e.g. call it an invertible verb? (It is indeed impossible to avoid having somewhat different definitions for linguistic terms when describing different languages or the "same" language throughout the ages, but maximum uniformity is a primary concern. No more new definitions than necessary. Oh, and complexity can be expressed by means of varying degrees of jargon; it is true that you often need more words if you use less of it.) – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica May 05 '13 at 20:59
  • I prefer to follow Occam. The simpler hypothesis is the way to bet. – John Lawler May 05 '13 at 21:24
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    Don't get me wrong, I think grouping all verbs that have the characteristics you mentioned together under one name is a good idea. But choosing a different word instead of "auxiliary" would appear to be neither more nor less complex. (Using a word differently from the way most people use it may create a different kind of complexity, if readers are unaware of this terminology.) – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica May 06 '13 at 05:16
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well, "sad" and "disappointed" do not describe the subject. they describe the action of feeling, sad or disappointed. a person feels sad he does not have a quality that is sadness. sadness comes and goes.

gidi Wagshol
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