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189
Note:
In English there are some words devoid of the marker -a-, which are semantically and functionally very
similar to statives. These are:
fond, glad, ill, sorry, well.
Their grammatical status is intermediate between that of stative and adjective.
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) a-sleep, a-fire, a-glow, and those that
cannot be devived because the part following a- does not correspond to any noun, verb, or adjective stem, as in
a-loof, a-ware, a-fraid.
Statives do not change their form to express concord with the word they refer to.
Note:
There are other words besides statives with the prefix a-:
across, along (adv. and prep.), amidst (prep.), anew (adv.) arise (verb), aloud (adj.), amount (noun), etc.
Syntactic function
§ 237. 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.
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.
Statives as predicatives within a compound nominal predicate:
He was terribly afraid of his father.
The house was ablaze with lights.
Soon she fell fast asleep.
He seemed afraid to go any further.
She felt alert and young.
Why do they look so frighteningly alike?
The Overlords remained aloof, hiding their faces from mankind.
Statives as predicatives within a double predicate:
He sat quite alone on that large verandah of his.
For a moment she stood aghast, looking at the door.
She was lying wide awake listening to all the sounds of the night.
She sounded very high and afraid.
When they have the function of objective predicative, statives describe the state of the person or non-
person denoted by the object:
First of all have the fire alight in the drawing room.
The large dog kept him afloat until the raft came up.
Don’t keep the door ajar.
Leave me alone, you fool.
I’ll get him awake in a minute.
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: