A New Look at "Predicative-Only"
Adjectives in English
BENGT JACOBSSON
study is a revised and updated version of Jacobsson (1961), which
inspired by Raysor’s ( 1959) note on &dquo;An Unexpected Usage: Ahead, Alive, and
the Like, before Nouns.&dquo; Although it seems to have gained some further ground
during the past few decades, the usage referred to is still ignored or treated as an
anomaly in most grammars and goes largely unrecorded in the dictionaries. Thus,
to take just one example, the increasing attributive (prenominal) use of aware is not
registered in the 1989 second edition of the monumental Oxford English Dictionary
or the great authoritative A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language
(Quirk et al. 1985). Before we turn to a discussion of this and other allegedly
predicative-only adjectives, a few words should be said about the difficulty or
impossibility of drawing a clear line of demarcation between adjectives and adverbs
in English.
The present
was
Adjective or Adverb?
The so-called
as
a-
words form
a
very
heterogeneous group including items such
alert, aloof, which have become established as bona fide adjectives, and adrift,
ajar, which
variously classified as adjectives or adverbs or both. With some
predicatives, according to Strang (1968, 188), &dquo;it seems pointless to maintain the
distinction between adjective and adverb (cf. asleep in He was asleep, He fell
asleep; here in He is here, Come here!).&dquo; Quirk et al. (1985, 408) distinguish
between a- adjectives, which can be used predicatively after the copula seem, and
a- adverbs such as aboard, abroad, which are incompatible with seem but may
appear as complements after verbs of motion (cf. The patient seemed
asleep/*abroad and She went abroadl*asleep). A rather different position is taken
by Long (1961, 286), who concedes that it may seem desirable to classify akin,
alive, and the like as adjectives, yet &dquo;because of their prepositional-unit origin they
are not usable as prepositive modifiers within nounal-headed units and are not
conveniently classified simply as adverbs.&dquo;
are
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I am grateful to Hans Andersson and Jan Svartvik for reading and
on an earlier version of this article. Any errors are, of course, my own.
Journal of EnglIsh Linguistics, Vol 24 / No 3,
0 1996 Sage Pubhcauons, Inc.
September 1996
206-219
9
206
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commenting
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Unlike central adjectives, but like verbs and prepositional groups, a- words can
be modified by very much (or much) (cf. He is very much alonelappreciatedlin
demand). However, many speakers and writers today also use very as an intensifier
of, for instance, afraid, alike, alive, alone, ashamed, and aware. The general
tendency to dispense with much can be seen at work in sentences such as the
following:
They seem very alike to me. [Piers Paul Read,
The Junkers, 203]
Now I may be wrong, of course, but I think he’s very alive. Shows all
the symptoms of it. [Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 269]
I’m very alone, Piet. [John Updike, Couples, 363]
She seemed very at ease and unconcerned. [William Boyd, Stars and
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
Bars, 147]
A second group of predicatives to be dealt with subsequently includes the
so-called health adjectives. Of these, well and ill are taken to be adverbs by
Jespersen (1948, 358) and adjectives by most other grammarians. (Ill meaning
’unwell’ should be distinguished from the adjective in ill health and the adverb in
ill-treat.) There is also some confusion about the status of postpositive adverbs such
as galore in money galore and apart in He was a man apart (see Predicatives in
Postposition section). The view taken here is that all these, including well and ill,
are best regarded as adverbs functioning as adjectives. In the literature they are
usually referred to as adjectives, and this practice is followed in the present study.
A-adjectives in Attributive Position
important to note at the outset that adjectives prefixed by a- form an open
items being continually added to those already recorded in the dictionclass,
aries. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED, 1989), according to Salkoff (1983,
300), contains no fewer than 139 words consisting of a + verb (from abask to ayelp).
As examples of new formations not recorded in the OED, consider (5)-(6):
It is
new
(5)
(6)
The late-evening TV news, for example, is aclutter with immaterial
chatter. [Tme, 22 December 1980]
Los Angeles will soon be ajumble with archers, boxers, cyclists ... and
so on. [Newsweek, 30 July 1984]
of this type are never found in prenominal position, the
situation is rather different with the handful of a- words traditionally listed in the
grammars as predicative only. The lists usually include afraid, alike, alive, alone,
awake; often ashamed, aware; sporadically afloat, aghast, alert, alight, aloof. As
Although predicatives
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208
shall see, however, quite a few of these do occur prenominally. Some grammarians, not content with a mere listing of predicative a- adjectives, add the observation
that these adjectives are adverbial or participial in force or at least in origin, that
some of them are restricted to predicative position because they can or must take
complementation, and that they typically refer to a temporary state rather than a
permanent quality or characteristic. It has also been suggested that the choice of
premodifying adjective may be influenced by the distribution of stress in nominal
groups (cf. *asleep stfdents/h6#-asleep students) and that the disinclination to use
a- words attributively may be due to the accidental identity of a- and the indefinite
article, an a- being felt as an awkward repetition and the a- as a kind of contradiction. In the sections that follow, all these attempts at explanation are discussed in
more detail and tested against the observed facts of usage.
we
The
Origins of the a- Prefix
Historically, a- words represent several different types: prepositional groups
(afloat, alive, aloof, asleep, and ultimately alert); participles (afraid, aghast,
ashamed, awake); and adjectives prefixed by Old English ge- (alike, aware). Alone
is exceptional in that it derives from all + one, reanalyzed as a + lone. It seems
reasonable to assume that words in which a- has retained some of its prepositional
force will be more averse to prenominal position than those in which the two-word
origin has become obscured. To the first category would belong items such as asleep
and alive (in the sense ’living’), which normally occur only in the predicative
construction; to the second category would belong items such as alert and aloof,
which are freely used as attributive adjectives and, like ashamed, can also take the
adverb suffix -ly.
Although the adverbial or participial origin of many a- adjectives goes some
way toward explaining their syntactic behavior, it does not go far enough. For
example, it fails to explain the fact that we can have an on-duty policeman but not
*an asleep policeman, which is the more surprising as the language is otherwise
remarkably hospitable to all kinds of prenominal modifiers; witness collocations
such as the above statement, the then governor, the now generation, askance looks,
on-the-spot inspections, whites-only beaches, look-alike twins, a once-upon-a-time
planet, and in a breathless I-can’t-wait-to-tell-you-this-too manner. Some of these
are obviously nonce uses; others (e.g., above, then) have come to stay in the position
before the noun, probably because there was no suitable adjective to put in their
places. Generally speaking, however, it is rare for simplex adverbs of place and time
to be used attributively (often is no longer so used, and now and seldom are used
only occasionally, the latter perhaps as an echo of Shakespeare’s seldom pleasure).
On the other hand, an adjective that does not normally occur before a noun is felt
to be less awkward in this position when accompanied by an adverbial premodifier.
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209
Cases in
point are half-alive people, a slightly ajar door, and a not fully awake
freshman. A similar observation holds for participles; compare, for instance, a
recently built house, the above-mentioned article, and *a built house, ?the mentioned article. This does not mean, of course, that premodification is a sine qua non
for attributive use. Among participles that readily occur before a noun, we find lost
(objects), stolen (jewels), and muttered (words) but hardly found (objects), bought
(jewels), or said (words). The reason may be that we are more likely to categorize
objects as lost or stolen than as found or bought and to categorize words as muttered
rather than merely said. By the same token, we speak of wandering minstrels and
the Wandering Jew, but we would not refer to a man wandering down the street as
’the wandering man’ (Quirk et al. 1985, 1326). More difficult to account for are
pairs such as the vanishedl*disappeared treasure, capturedl*caught birds,
closedl*shut eyes, and a frightenedl*an afraid child. The unacceptability of afraid
versus frightened in this last pair can hardly be due to a difference in meaning and
is certainly not due to the fact that afraid is participial in origin (or may still be felt
to be a participle, as suggested in Kruisinga 1932, 122). As we have seen, there is
no reason to believe, either, that the prepositional origin of a- in asleep is solely
responsible for the unacceptability of *an asleep policeman.
Adjectives with or without Complementation
adjectives are restricted to predicative position because they require a
complement, usually a prepositional phrase or a to-infinitive clause. Examples are
averse (to), devoid (of), exempt ( from), tantamount (to), and loath (to). It is
sometimes suggested that aware cannot, or should not, be used without complementation or qualification. &dquo;To use aware without any qualifying word at all is
modish but meaningless, e.g., ’Aware, provincial, intelligent, tall Englishman (New
Some
Statesman)’
&dquo;
(Weiner 1984, 93). As further illustration of this modish (but
meaningless) aware, consider the
(7)
(8)
not
following:
His sleep, he saw from his watch, had lasted an hour and a half and had
restored him to a thinking aware being without deluding him as to what
he had done. [Ruth Rendell, Master of the Moor, 141 ]
’Well, then,’ she continued, with what seemed to her to be the very
height of aware sophistication, ’why ever did you want to come here on
this sort of trip?’ [Margaret Drabble, Jerusalem the Golden, 76]
The Semantics of Attributives and Predicatives
classic article, Bolinger (1967) argues that &dquo;most predicatives with be
fundamentally different from attributives&dquo; (2). As far as a- words are concerned,
In
are
a now
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210
he notes in passing that they &dquo;have been restricted to predicative and post-adjunct
position both by their adverbial origin and by their sense of temporariness (the two
factors are related of course): a house afire, a man asleep, arms akimbo&dquo; (12).
Attributives, on the other hand, are associated with &dquo;a set meaning&dquo; that he calls
&dquo;characterization&dquo; (7). The difference comes out clearly in combinations such as a
ready witl?His wit is ready versus The man is ready/*the ready man. In a later
contribution, Bolinger stresses the point that an adjective placed before the noun
&dquo;is not just any adjective that can occur after the verb be, but is one that can be used
to do more than describe a temporary state-it has to be able to characterize the
noun. *Where is the loose dog? is an unlikely sentence because it refers to a
temporary state.&dquo; For the same reason, we cannot say *the asleep people &dquo;because
we are not characterizing them, only telling how they are at the moment&dquo; (Bolinger
1977, 18).
It is important to note, however, that what Bolinger describes here is a tendency
rather than a rule. Characterization is not a necessary condition for attributive
position, just as temporariness is not a necessary condition for predicative position.
An attributive frightened, for example, can refer to a temporary state, as in a
frightened child, whereas predicative afraid may be used about a more permanent
fear, as in She is afraid of dogs. We can employ an attributive angry to characterize
a person but also, in a given context, to describe a temporary state (cf. George is an
angry man and thelan angry George). Alike and alone are about equally resistant
to attributive position, but they differ widely with respect to temporariness versus
permanence. Conversely, adjectives that typically refer to a temporary state may
have widely different distributions, thus a naked girl but not *an asleep girl;
compare also examples with aghast (32) and ajar (36).
In many cases, it is impossible to draw the line between a temporary and a
permanent state or between a state and a quality. And no matter how the line is
drawn, we are left with the unexplained difference in acceptability between *an
asleep child and a sleeping child or between *an alive friendlthing and a still alive
friend/thing, as used in the following:
(9)
&dquo;The bloke got triple-tapped,&dquo; a sergeant recounted one day about a
luckless but still alive friend near the Zambian border. [Tme, 27 February
1978]
(10) He watched her now as he would watch a still-alive thing to which he
had just given a death blow, because he could see that she was believing
him, gradually. [Patricia Highsmith, The Blunderer, 48]
For Kruisinga (1932, 122), &dquo;it is probably the meaning chiefly, if not exclusively,
that prevents the attributive use of these words [a- words], for we find them so used
in compounds, i.e., when the word is less characteristically temporary, as in
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211
wide-awake, sound-asleep.&dquo; Essentially the same argument recurs in Kruisinga and
Erades (1953, 193), where it is said, apropos of cases such as two fast-asleep
servants, that &dquo;the state is apt to be thought of apart from a single moment.&dquo;
However, because the difference between being fast asleep and being merely asleep
is not one of temporariness, it seems more prudent to discuss these compound
attributives in terms of state/quality rather than of varying degrees of temporariness.
By the insertion of a word implying degree or manner (fast, etc.), our attention is
no longer focused on the state as such but rather on the quality of the state or on the
quality alone. In any case, if suitably premodified, not only aware and asleep but
also alone and alike can appear before the noun:
(11) Sometimes you got to feel sorry for Perry. He must be one of the most
alone people there ever was. [Truman Capote, In Cold Blood, 335]
(12) ’Shop’ and ’emporium,’ for example, refer to very much alike objects
but have very different ranges of collocation. [M. A. K. Halliday et al.,
The Linguistic Sciences and English Teaching, 34]
more-alike people I’ve yet to see. [David Crystal, Lingua 17 :51]
Two
(13)
Askew is seldom used attributively, as in (34) later, but is common
position when preceded by slightly. One example will suffice:
enough in this
(14) &dquo;Nice and quiet, I expect,&dquo; said Cheryl, leaning forward on her elbows
and bringing her blue, slightly askew eyes quite close to his. [David
Lodge, Small World, 133]
Among a- words that can be more freely used in characterizing function, with or
without premodification, we find alive (especially in the sense ’full of life’ and
‘active’), ashamed, and aware as in (7)-(8) earlier:
(15)
(16)
(17)
(18)
I like it when her fierce alive blue eyes are sparkling and laughing. [Doris
Lessing, The Diaries of Jane Somers, 95]
The interesting corner, the only alive part of the town at this time of
night, was the broad sandy area in front of the Plage, where a few men
sat at tables with their coffees or glasses of wine. [Patricia Highsmith,
The Tremor of Forgery, 31]
The painters revived the glory and gladness of an alive world and
reproduced beautiful forms which attested to the delightfulness of
physical existence. [Morris Kline, Mathematics in Western Culture, 150]
&dquo;And from all I understand he is carrying his tail between his legs and is
one very ashamed person.&dquo; [Philip Roth, When She Was Good, 34]
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212
(19) No, surely, things had gone too far between them for him to have felt
anything but an ashamed relief. [Angus Wilson, The Wrong Set, 181 ]
(20) Formally aware people are more likely to be influenced by the past than
they are by the present or future. [Edward T. Hall, The Silent Language, 73]
(21) It was no longer the face of a gentle domestic animal, unconscious of its
enemies, but an aware face, cautious and evasive. [Olivia Manning,
Friends and Heroes, 275]
Although ashamed in ( 19) modifies relief, it is not the relief that is ashamed but
rather the person feeling relieved. Such a transfer of reference occurs with other aadjectives as well, and there is reason to believe that it facilitates the use of these
words in attributive position. Further evidence in support of this view comes from
quotations such as (22)-(25). It is perhaps significant also that Quirk et al. (1985)
make a subtle distinction between ?*afraid people (403) an ?an afraid look (409).
(22) When I mention to Americans, who cannot get berths on homeward-
going ships in September, why not try Canadian steamships, an afraid
look appears. [W. J. Blake, Understanding the Americans, 128]
(23) He thought this quietly, in aghast despair, regret. [William Faulkner,
Light in August, 351]]
(24) She was looking about her with an expression of aghast incredulity.
[William Boyd, Stars and Bars, 236]
The
most important hours are the &dquo;alone hours&dquo; in morning and afternoon,
(25)
when he reads and thinks. [The Observer, 28 April 1963]
Cited out of context, *the asleep boy, *an awake observer, *an afraid man, *the
alive pilot, and other such specimens found in grammars and handbooks of usage
look as reassuringly impossible as they are intended to be, but some of them improve
considerably when placed in a suitable context. In (26), afraid is probably meant
to be classifying or characterizing rather than merely state descriptive, whereas
alive in (27) is identifying (referring to the one of two kittens that has not been
killed by its mother).
(26)
I just felt,
suddenly ... that she was an afraid person. [Charles Morgan,
Challenge to Venus, 83]
(27) He took the alive kitten to her but she got up and walked away. She
didn’t want it. [Doris Lessing, A Man and Two Women, 188]
It should be clear by now that meaning is an important factor but that meaning alone
does not explain why a- words should be particularly resistant to the attributive
construction. Judging from my own material, supplemented by the OED and
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213
Spevack (1973), this resistance is not as strong as it used to be. As noted in a previous
section, one of the marked features of English is the great freedom with which nouns
can take various kinds of premodifiers, including prepositional phrases such as
on-duty, but not (yet) a one-time prepositional phrase such as asleep, etymologically ’on sleep.’
Juxtaposed Accents and the Awkwardness of
an a- / the a-
Bolinger (1965) provides a wealth
English to avoid juxtaposed accents in
of examples illustrating the tendency in
nominal groups such as a proven case, a
drunken sailor, shrunken skin, the lesser number, contented cows, and half-alive
people. Bolinger’s point is taken up by Hayes (1984, 47), who agrees that half-alive
people is more eurhythmic than alive people. However, although it is easy to find
evidence in favor of this eurhythmic explanation, there is no lack of counterevidence, even within the restricted area of prenominal a- words. In addition to (7) and
other pertinent examples quoted earlier, notice the following:
(28) Thomas and Portia turned their alike profiles in the direction from which the
breeze came. [Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart, quoted in the OED]
(29) I yearned to grab away her infernal red cello and enfold the dear
misguided woman in my strong, alive, flesh. [Lisa Alther, Kinflicks, 267]
(30) Of what is Colin’s charm composed? Of a smile, of the kind called
boyish, easy and radiant.... A commanding eye, an alive eye, quick
and watchful. [William Sansom, The Cautious Heart, 57]
(31) Kathleen, this poor, handsome, blushing, ashamed girl, who has this
sorrowful dark little spirit-the phrase has made me see her. [Doris
Lessing, The Diaries of Jane Somers, 501]
Jespersen (1948, 333), who regards rhythm as a factor of minor importance, comes
up with another theory. He writes,
probable that the accidental identity of a- and the indefinite article has
something to do with the disinclination to use any of these words attributively.
(An a- was felt as a kind of awkward repetition, and the a- as a kind of
contradiction.) At any rate some of them can be used in that position when
preceded by an adverb or other word, which, so to speak, hides away the a-.
It is
It is possible that the sequences referred to are felt to be awkward by some writers,
but there is nothing in my material to indicate that such is the case. Examples such
as
(32-36) are by no means exceptional:
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214
(32)
(33)
(34)
(35)
(36)
An aghast White House Official summed up the most extraordinary week in
the White House since Richard Nixon resigned in 1974. [Time, 30 July 1979]
&dquo;A cave is considered an alive environment. People isolated in a cold,
official area show more stress and depression.&dquo; [(Newsweek, 5 June 1989]
He pushed open an askew wicker gate in the tangled hedge that marked
the garden boundary. [William Boyd, Stars and Bars, 130]
They spoke to him, he thought, in the aghast tones of parents asking a
headmaster why he intends to expel their daughter from his school.
[Ruth Rendell, An Unkindness of Ravens, 149]
Behind the ajar rust-red portal the church is gathering in silence toward
its eternal deed. [John Updike, Rabbit Is Rich, 241]]
Predicatives in
Postposition
Postponed (&dquo;postpositive&dquo;) adjectives are usually analyzed as reduced or undeveloped relative clauses, thus measures (that are) popular with the electorate.
Syntactically, therefore, postposition is closely akin to predicative position. Notice,
however, that we can say measures that are popular but not *measures popular,
without the complement. Predicative a- words can occur postpositively with or
without complementation, for example, in a cushion alive with vermin or a man
asleeplalonelapart. Of these, alone and apart may be classifying or characterizing
in force, as in (37)-(40). This usage is particularly common with alone, which seems
to have escaped the attention of grammarians and lexicographers.
(37) In fact ’lonely’ was never a word I would have used to characterize
Charlotte Douglas but conversation with Victor requires broad strokes.
’She’s &dquo;a woman alone.&dquo; As I believe you used to call her.’ [Joan Didion,
(38)
A Book of Common Prayer, 183]
Milton was destined to be the man
no
pleasure
alone, sufficient unto himself, finding
in the gay world about him. [John Burgess Wilson, English
Literature, 148]
(39) Joyce’s Dublin [is] ... a city of solitaries, one sign of which, of course,
is Joyce’s use of the stream-of-consciousness technique itself, for it is
essentially the technique for rendering man-alone. [Walter Allen,
Tradition and Dream, 35]
(40) Homer, however, was a man apart. He assumed an easy, confident
intimacy which she reciprocated. [Fay Weldon, The President’s Child, 117]
According to Bolinger (1977, 18), &dquo;an adjective that can only refer to a temporary state has to follow the noun: money galore.&dquo; As can be seen from (37)-(40),
the converse does not hold: predicatives in postposition do not always refer to a
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215
opposed to a more permanent characteristic. (Compare, in this
respect, &dquo;passive&dquo; adjectives in -able or -ible: rivers navigable/navigable rivers and
temporary
state as
the stars visible/the visible stars.)
Health Adjectives in Attributive Position
subgroup of predicative adjectives, most grammars include a number of
words relating to health: well, ill, unwell, poorly, fine, faint. What these have in
common with a- words such as afraid is that they denote a state, temporary or more
or less permanent. Kruisinga (1932, 121), commenting on the clock is fast versus
*a fast clock, argues that
As
a
the temporary character of the quality is sufficient to prevent the adjective
from being used attributively, so that we never speak of a fast clock, although
fast women is (and are) common enough. Similarly the adjective well expressing a state of health is not used attributively; if it is so found in an exceptional
case, the quality will be found to imply what is thought of as more or less
permanent [as in A well child was difficult enough-but a sick one !].
good. But we still do not know why sick can appear freely in attributive
with
or without the implication of temporariness. What might prevent well
position,
and ill from being freely used attributively is not only &dquo;the temporary character of
the quality&dquo; but the fact that they have not (yet) been fully converted to adjective
status. Poorly, another adverb-adjective, differs from well and ill in that it is
exclusively predicative (like unwell). Fine and faint represent a fourth type, predicative in the health sense, attributive in others.
Prenominal well meaning ’healthy’ is attested from the seventeenth century
onward and is still very much alive, especially in American English. This usage has
long been regarded as unacceptable by British grammarians, from Sweet (1891) to
Swan (1980), but it is recorded in some recent dictionaries and grammars, the
standard example being He is not a well man. For the benefit of those who still
believe that prenominal well is an exclusively American phenomenon, I add a few
British examples to the American ones:
So far,
so
(41) Echolalia is a mental disease which makes people immediately repeat things
that well people around them say. [Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 128]
(42) She is the wellest wife in the world until she is sick, which isn’t often,
and then she is the sickest wife in the world. [John Steinbeck, The Winter
of Our Discontent, 161 ]
(43) In a day she romped a little and by the end of the week she was a well
dog. [John Steinbeck, Cannery Row, 155]
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216
(44) ... 76 percent of the patients with coronary heart disease who were
(45)
(46)
tested responded to this voice analysis test in such a way that it was
possible to differentiate them from well subjects on the basis of their
voice tracings alone. [The Observer, 13 July 1969]
The way she had carried on about Mr. Aveyard. He hadn’t been a well
man, nor young, and she would have lost her widow’s pension into the
bargain. [Beryl Bainbridge, The Dressmaker, 6]
If in a hospital you have two patients dying for want of good kidneys,
and one for want of a good stomach, and all could be saved by
transplants; and if, into this hospital, there walked a perfectly well man
to visit some other sick relative; then on utilitarian grounds the well man
should be dismembered and his organs distributed among the patients.
[Bryan Magee in Men of Ideas, edited by Magee, 138]
The attributive use of ill ’unwell’ is condemned or described as extremely rare, not
only in usage guides such as Wood ( 1981, 128) and Todd and Hancock ( 1986, 241 )
but also in the OED and descriptive grammars such as Schibsbye (1965, 146),
Christophersen and Sandved (1969,132), and Strang (1968,140;1970,138). Quirk
and his associates (1985, 433) recognize the occurrence of health adjectives as
attributives, but they give no example of ill in this function. For Palmer ( 1984, 60),
the status of ill is not wholly clear: &dquo;Can we or can we not say the ill boy?&dquo; Some
textual examples of this ill are provided in (47)-(50).
(47) Perhaps, her rational self had said to herself, he is simply worn out, with
trying to deal with the baby and the ill wife, and she had offered to look
after the baby for a few days. [Margaret Drabble, The Realms of Gold, 92]
(48) Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), one of the most widely disseminated
books of this century, was written by the ill Orwell on the eve of his death.
[Martin S. Day, History of English Literature 1837 to the Present, 411]
&dquo;Don’t
let him bite his tongue off,&dquo; a short sergeant near Yossarian
(49)
advised shrewdly, and a seventh man threw himself into the fray to
wrestle with the ill lieutenant’s face. [Joseph Heller, Catch-22, 436]
(50) She just stopped caring-about the young surgeons on ’Westview General,’,’
about her ill mother, about Wendy and Ira. [Lisa Alther, Kinflicks, 396]
modifier in indefinite noun phrases (NPs), ill is usually, although
always, classifying rather than state descriptive. This is particularly noticeable
in NPs with non-specific or generic reference, as in (51)-(57).
When used
as a
not
(51) I may say that there was no confirmation of his story that he went to
London to visit an ill relation or a relative who had got into trouble.
[Agatha Christie, The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side, 194]
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217
(52) The fact that he [Dylan Thomas] was always an ill man was not due to
(53)
(54)
(55)
(56)
(57)
the dirty materialism of our age, or to the Nazi concentration camps.
[Philip Toynbee, The Observer, 13 November 1960]
He looked so thin and ill-nourished-it would be a mercy to let the
waves take him. It was like consigning an ill thing, with little life left,
to the waves. [William Sansom, The Cautious Heart, 201]
The device can damage blood cells that an ill baby cannot afford to lose.
[Time, 29 January 1973]
Hilda ... had a career instead, which any right-minded woman would
give up in order to look after an ill mother. [Fay Weldon, Praxis, 188]
If, which God forbid and which I don’t seriously anticipate, your
husband turns out to be seriously deranged, he’ll be looked after like
any other ill person. [John Wain, The Smaller Sky, 132]
’Simeon doesn’t have to get sick for me to visit. In fact I avoid ill people
as much as possible.’ [John Mortimer, Paradise Postponed, 48]
Unlike true predicatives, such as adrift, asleep, and the like, both well and ill can
function as heads of NPs with generic reference: the well, the ill. In the case of ill,
this usage is not sanctioned by grammars and dictionaries. According to Longman
Dictionary of Contemporary English (1978), one can speak of the sick or ’sick
people’ but not of *the ill. Writers who do not heed this warning include the
following:
(58)
In the nineteen-thirties there were no electric blankets, and only the rich
or the ill thought of sleeping in heated bedrooms. [Margaret Drabble,
The Ice Age, 180]
(59) But he must get away soon. The ill, the dispirited, the dying, were no
real help to him. [John Wain, The Smaller Sky, 44]
(60) ’Knowledge is free,’ shouted the doctor. ’I accept payment for making
the ill healthy, because a money transaction speeds the healing process.’
[Fay Weldon, The President’s Child, 173]
Collocations such as the mentally/terminally ill and mentallylgravelylacutelyl
incurably ill patients are too frequent to need exemplification here.
Summary and Conclusion
adjectives can be used both attributively and predicatively,
&dquo;peripheral&dquo; adjectives are restricted to attributive or, less often, to predicative
position (hence the failure of transformational grammar to base attribution on
predication, that is, to derive attributives from predicatives). Among the comparaWhereas &dquo;central&dquo;
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218
tively few predicative-only adjectives, a- words, or rather subsets of these, have
traditionally been singled out for special attention-which is not to say that their
distribution has been correctly described or adequately explained. As it happens,
the items thus singled out and lumped together in the grammars are precisely those
that exhibit the greatest variation, covering the whole range from asleep, which is
never used attributively (except when premodified), to alert and aloof, which are
for all intents and purposes central adjectives usable in either position-pace
Bolinger (1975, 433), according to whom alert behaves like awake, aside, akin,
and the like. The only reasonably safe generalization that can be made about these
words is that most of them can premodify a noun if they are themselves premodified
(all normally awake persons, etc.). Striking a balance between generalization, to
the extent that it is possible, and particularization, which is necessary, we arrive at
the following tentative description of present-day usage with regard to the two
groups of predicatives discussed in the preceding sections:
Alive
(especially in the sense ’full of life’), ashamed, and aware are more
frequent in attributive position than grammars and dictionaries would have
us believe and should no longer be included among predicative-only adjectives.
(Unmodified) afraid, aghast, ajar, alike, alone, and askew are (very) occasionally used attributively. Stray examples of attributive use have also been noted
in the cases of agog, ahead, akimbo, akin, apart, and awry.
Adjectives that invariably take predicative position (or postposition; cf. Predicatives in Postposition section) include (unmodified) ablaze, adrift, afire,
afloat, alight, asleep, and awake.
Among the health adjectives, well and ill are usually, although far from always,
predicative, whereas poorly, unwell, fine, and faint are apparently predicative
only.
grammarians who have tried to find the rationale behind the
seemingly idiosyncratic behavior of predicatives, Jespersen is mainly concerned
with the syntactic and historical aspects of the problem, whereas Kruisinga, Erades,
and Bolinger pay more attention to the semantics of predicatives and attributives,
which they discuss in terms of temporariness versus permanence or characterization. Although it is true that none of the factors invoked by these scholars
can be dismissed as entirely irrelevant, it is also true, as I hope to have shown, that
no one factor has had a decisive influence on the distribution of predicatives in
English. In this, as in so many other cases, it turns out that usage is determined by
a variety of factors interacting in complex ways, and the more we look for the
linguist’s Holy Grail, the all-encompassing explanatory principle, the more it is not
Of the few
there.
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219
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