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-. 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), and those that cannot be divided because the part following a- does not correspond to any noun, verb, or adjective stem (Fig. 89).
SYNTACTIC FEATURES OF THE STATIVE
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 (Fig. 90).
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.
Fig. 89
Fig. 90
When they have the function of objective predicative, statives describe the state of the person or non-person denoted by the object.
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. When used as detached attributes, statives may be either post- or premodifying.
The part-of-speech interpretation of the statives is not shared by all linguists working in the domain of English, and has found both its proponents and opponents.
If we compare semantic, morphological and syntactic characteristics of the stative and the adjective, we can find both different and similar features (Table 15).
Table 15
The Adjective and the Stative
| Meaning | Form | Function | ||
| Patterns of combinability | Degrees of comparison | |||
| Adjectives | property of a substance | 1. nouns in preposition 2. nouns in postposition 3. adverbs of degree 4. link-verbs 5. notional verbs in a double predicate | synthetical and analitical forms | 1. attributive 2. predicative |
| Statives | property of a state | 1. nouns in postposition 2. link-verbs 3. notional verbs in a double predicate | analitical forms | 1. predicative 2. attributive |
Thus, the analysis shows that statives, though forming a unified set of words, do not constitute a separate lexemic class existing in language. They should be looked upon as a subclass within the general class of adjectives.
ADVERB
