Question:
I am having a discussion with a linguist who argues that in sentences
like the following
"The boy swims nude in the river"
"The sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home"
"nude" and "bright" are adverbs and not adjectives. Her concept of
adverb is that it is a word or expression that modifies the relation
between a noun and a verb. In these cases "nude" and "bright"
"focalizes the relation between the subject and verb of the above
sentences. However, the linguist concedes that the manner in which
the relation is focalized or made more precise is different from the
manner in which
The boy swims nudely in the river"
The sun shines brightly on my old Kentucky home.
That is to say, it focalizes in a more "distant" manner, whereas the
-ly adverbs make more precise the verb.
Fine. But it is not clear precisely how the adjective-like "nude" and
"bright" makes more precise or focalizes the relation between noun and
verb. And it is not clear why adjectival forms are used in this case
and not some other forms. Any linguists care to elucidate on this?
Can we still think of these as "adjectives" or "adjectivoid" as well
as "adverbial"? adjectival adverbial?
My guess is that the reason adjective-like forms are chosen is because
they describe the subject in a way that makes more precise the nature
of how the subject performs the action of the verb. It is not the
action that is itself characterized or made more precise, but the
subjects' characteristics that have a bearing on the action.
Here's some other cases:
He argued strong for his position.
He argued strongly for his position.
The murmuring brook flowed through the woods. (murmuring = adjective)
The brook flowed murmuring through the woods (murmuring = adverbial).
The brook flowed murmuringly through the woods (murmuringly = adverb).
Answer:
There is one important distinction between adjectives and adverbs:
adjectives are inflected, adverbs are not. But in English adjectives
aren't, or rather they look the same in both numbers, and if English
had genders, "nude" would have agreed to the gender too of "boy".
"Nude" in "the boy swims nude in the river" definitely is an
adjective. Perhaps what you're suggesting is that the concept of
adjectives and adverbs as in Latin, an inflected language, is not
appropriate for describing English grammar. That discussion I must
leave for the linguists.
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