Б. С. Хаймович, Б. И. Роговская теоретическая грамматика английского языка

THE ADLINK
(THE CATEGORY OF STATE)

§ 327. In Modern English there exists a certain class of words such as asleep, alive, afloat, which is characterized by:

1. The lexico-grammatical meaning of 'state' ¹. He is a s l e e p = He is in a state of sleep.
2. The productive prefix a-: swim — aswim, shiver — ashiver, etc.
3. Peculiar combinability: the words of this class are as­sociated almost exclusively with link-verbs: to be alive, to fall asleep, being adrift, etc.
4. The main syntactical function of a predicative comple­ment.
As we know, (see § 47) a class of words united by such fea­tures may be regarded as a separate part of speech. B. A. Ilyish has called it 'the category of state' by analogy with a similar class of words in the Russian language. Cf. Мне было приятно, грустно, обидно, where the last three words ending in -o denote different states and are associated with link-verbs. V. V. Vinogradov and other Soviet linguists call them 'words of the category of state', though many object to their being considered a separate part of speech.
Now 'words of the category of state' is hardly a felicitous apellation: it is cumbersome and the word 'category' has usually a different application. We suggest a handier term — adlinks, on the analogy of adverbs, or adlinks of state, to reflect their chief properties.
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1} The meaning of state embraces: a) psychic state (afraid, aghast), b) physical state (asleep, awake), c) state in space (aslope, asquint), etc.

§ 328. Those grammarians who do not recognize adlinks as a separate part of speech usually consider them as a sub­class of adjectives. Let us compare adjectives and adlinks on the basis of the criteria we use to distinguish parts of speech.

1. The lexico-grammatical meanings of adjectives and adlinks are different. The former denote 'qualities', the latter 'states'. Lexically, qualities, or states, or actions can be denoted by words of different parts of speech. For instance the state of sleeping can be named by the verb (to) sleep, the noun sleep, the adlink asleep and the adjective sleepy. But in accordance with their lexico-grammatical meaning the verb sleeps presents the state as an action, the noun sleep as a substance, the adjective sleepy as a quality, and the adlink asleep as a state. Similarly the action of swimming is present­ed by the noun swim (to have a swim) as a substance, by the adlink aswim as a state and by the verb swim as an action. Thus we see that the meaning of 'state' common to the words asleep, awake, aswim, afire, afloat, etc. is an abstraction from the individual lexical meanings of these words. It is the le­xico-grammatical meaning of the whole class of adlinks.
2. The stem-building elements of the two parts of speech are quite different. The characteristic prefix of adlinks is a-. Adjectives have other affixes: -ful, -less, -ive, -ous, un-, pre-, etc.
3. Adjectives possess the category of the degrees of compar­ison. Adlinks have no grammatical categories. Cf. sleepy — sleepier — (the) sleepiest and asleep.
B. A. Ilyish thinks that adlinks possess the category of tense. But this category (as well as the categories of mood, person, number, etc.) is expressed by the link-verb (is afraid, was afraid, were afraid, etc.), not by the adlink. As shown in § 26, the combination was afraid is not an analytical word. Cf. also fell asleep, dropped asleep, lay asleep.
4. The combinability of adjectives and adlinks differs greatly. As we have seen (§ 112), the most typical combinative model of adjectives is its right-hand connection with nouns (an ardent lover). Now this model is alien to adlinks. It is the more striking since not only adjectives but almost any part of speech, many combinations of words, clauses or combina­tions of clauses can have right-hand connections with nouns in Modern English. Cf. the above remark. The we-know-that-he-knows-tliat-she-knows development gets a bit wearing. (Daily Worker).
Linguists who regard adlinks as adjectives try to explain the strange opposition of these 'adjectives' to combinations like *an asleep man either by rhythm (the unusual succession of two unstressed and two stressed syllables) or by the possi­bility of mistaking the a- in asleep for the indefinite article (then it would sound as a succession of two articles in *an asleep man)². But cases like an acute pain, an astute man, quite common in Modern English, show the fallacy of both theories.
In reality this negative combinability can be explained historically by the development of adlinks from prepositional phrases like the old English on slsepe (E. asleep), on life (E. alive), on flote (E. afloat). On a synchronic basis this peculiarity of adlinks shows that they are not adjectives, but a different part of speech.
Besides this negative combinability adlinks are character­ized by several models of positive connection. The most typi­cal of them is the left-hand connection with link-verbs (881 cases out of 1,000), which suggests the name 'adlink'.
E. g. He had been ashamed and afraid. (Abrahams). Adlinks often follow notional links (see § 195).
E. g. Then he would return and lie awake for hours. (Abrahams).
Other connections are seen in the following sentences. I woke at six the next morning, and found George awake. (Jerome). Lady Babs looked so pretty — prettier asleep even than awake... For Barbara asleep was a symbol of that Golden age in which she so desparately believed. (Galsworthy).
5. The syntactical functions of adjectives and adlinks do not coincide. Adjectives are mainly employed as attributes, and adlinks as predicative complements. This is why adlinks are often called predicative adjectives and adverbs (see The Oxford Dictionary) to suggest that the difference between these classes of words is purely syntactical. But adlinks form connections not only with finite link-verbs, parts of predications, but with verbid link-verbs as well, employed in various functions.
E. g. Under these conditions, he said, you would show 'none of the normally accepted signs of b e i n g alive'. (Daily Worker).
How lucky we are to be a l i v e! (Asquith).
Summing up, we can say that adjectives and adlinks are different classes of words, i. e. that adlinks form a separate part of speech.