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It is said that the omission of "to be" is allowed only when the adjective (phrases), noun (phrases), or prepositional phrase comes after the to be like this:

a He seemed (to be) angry about the decision.

b This seemed (to be) of great importance.

c She seemed (to be) a great player.

But I found some strange things about it. For example, this.

d He seemed excited by the news.

Well, excited by the news is definitely not an adjective phrase. Were the to be inserted in it, it would describe the action like this: the news excited him. So "excited" would be a past participle used as a verb after an auxiliary verb, not an adjective.

Like in a passive voice where the participles after the "to be" are considered verbal, or stative, participle phrase when not considered a pure adjective.

e He was bored by the music. <- bored by the music is not an adjective phrase but a stative, or verbal, participle phrase.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_passive_voice#Stative_and_adjectival_uses

So why is it possible to say sentence d when "excited by the news" is a stative phrase not an adjective phrase? Wouldn't it be equivalent to deleting to be with present participle like this : He seemed doing the job.

Edit: What I referred to as stative past participle is known as dynamic passive by many. I think Wikipedia had some problem. http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2008/11/stative-seeking.html

lotus flower
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    "excited by the news" is an adjective phrase, so is "bored by the music" :) – Armen Ծիրունյան Oct 25 '15 at 16:53
  • @ Armen Ծիրունյան Is it? Then why do people make distinction between passive voice? I thought that those phrases are considered adjective phrases only when used with no helping verb, as in this case: A boy excited by the news or a girl bore by the music. But if the helping verb, or auxiliary verb is put in, it would be considered a verb phrase, not an adjective phrase: He is excited by the news. Or am I understanding it wrongly? – lotus flower Oct 25 '15 at 16:57
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    Many English adjectives are formed from participles and are identical to them in pronunciation and spelling. One can only tell the difference in clear cases. Anyway, it doesn't matter much how the node is labelled, as long as the constituents are correctly parsed. – John Lawler Oct 25 '15 at 17:01
  • @John Lawler So do you mean that stative participle phrases as well as adjectival participle phrase can be used if they are parsed correctly? It is kind of hard for me, as I do not know how they are actually parsed... – lotus flower Oct 25 '15 at 17:07
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    "Adjective" is a syntactic category, and "stative" is a semantic one. Many adjectives are stative, and many statives are adjectives, but they don't contrast before "participle". Participle, gerund, and infinitive phrases are just subordinate clauses of some kind with their subjects missing, for various reasons. – John Lawler Oct 25 '15 at 17:31
  • @John Lawler I'm sorry. I think I was confused by Wikipedia. What I meant to describe was dynamic passive, not stative passive. http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2008/11/stative-seeking.html But I get your point. They are just subordinate clauses. But I do not see your point in informing that, even though it is very helpful, as it is not, I believe, directly related to my question. Are you implying that I can even use gerund after "seem to be"? – lotus flower Oct 25 '15 at 17:41
  • @lotusflower: Not after seem; as you know, complement types are governed by matrix predicates. The constructions called "stative passive" are not passive at all; they're frozen and often don't represent real verbs at all -- or any more. For instance, consider soft-shelled as in soft-shelled crabs; there is no verb to soft-shell, nor is there even a verb to shell, at least not one with the meaning 'have a shell', instead of 'remove a shell'. They are formed from participial verb forms, but they are just adjectives. Adjectiveness is determined by use, not form. – John Lawler Oct 25 '15 at 17:59
  • @JohnLawler Thank you for the kind, lengthy response! I am grateful. As to your mentioning that stative passives are not passives, I understand what you mean. I believe they are called false passives by many, for it is just a subject complement. I also understand why soft-shelled is an adjective, and the use that affects its adjectiveness. However, what I was trying to comprehend all along is the dynamic passive and whether it is perceived as an adjective or not, to which many of the websites I wondered around strongly said NO. – lotus flower Oct 25 '15 at 18:23
  • @JohnLawler Also, the dynamic passive is not adjective because of its use, not the form. Ex: He was hit by a car. <-not adjective. A man hit by the car walked around. <- adjective. This characteristic of dynamic passive led me to thinking that this type of usage should not be used with "to-be deletion", for authorities said that it can only be used with noun phrase, adjective phrase, and prepositional phrase. – lotus flower Oct 25 '15 at 18:26
  • @JohnLawler Sorry if I didn't catch what you actually meant and implied with your comments, and if I seem to be stupidly repeating the same question and logic over and over like a parrot, but, you see, I'm just a learner here:) – lotus flower Oct 25 '15 at 18:30
  • Passive does not form an adjective phrase; it's part of the verb phrase. Passive is a transformation, a syntactic rule. If an auxiliary is deleted by a transformation like Whiz-Deletion in The man [who was] hit by the car, what's left -- hit by a car -- is a verb phrase, too. – John Lawler Oct 25 '15 at 23:07
  • @JohnLawler So many wrong informations on the internet! Every websites I visited listed participle phrases as adjective phrases, while I suspected that they are the reduced relative clause, not adjective phrases. So are the websotes perfectly wrong? http://www.grammar-monster.com/glossary/adjective_phrases.htm and https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/627/02/ – lotus flower Oct 25 '15 at 23:50
  • @lotusflower: Nothing is perfect, I'm afraid. Seriously, transformations have their own rules, and the traditional grammar isn't really ready to discuss them. If you're dealing with a grammar book or a website that says English has more than two tenses, for instance, you're dealing with amateurs. If you really want to see how seem works, it's the poster verb for A-Raising. – John Lawler Oct 25 '15 at 23:57
  • @JohnLawler Ah, learning from amateurs leads to a disaster... thank you for correcting me on participle phrases! – lotus flower Oct 26 '15 at 00:00
  • Not necessarily disaster, but certainly confusion. – John Lawler Oct 26 '15 at 00:07
  • @JohnLawler- Can you summarize or compile your comments and include them as an *answer* to these questions? – Mark Hubbard Dec 15 '15 at 08:29
  • @JohnLawler- ...so "Seem small clause" will move off the "Unanswered" list? Thank you, kind sir. I always appreciate your many brilliant answers and insights on EL&U. – Mark Hubbard Dec 16 '15 at 16:07

1 Answers1

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In this question a simple equation is made unnecessarily complex, as if, through back calculation. As an answer we would like to ask another question : why do we choose SEEM as main verb of all the four examples?

Here lies the answer to this post. 'Seem' is a true linking verb like any form of 'be' verb and 'become'. They are exceptional in the sense that like other copular/ stative / abstract verbs as 'feel', 'grow', 'look', 'prove' etc., they never function as action verbs. In the questions "to be" is supplemented; no harm. But I think it is not necessary.

By substituting the verb at hand with a 'be' verb is the best test of knowing if the verb is a linking verb; SEEM passes the test.

The rest is history — all noted in grammar books : that linking verbs take complements; complements can be a noun, an adjective, a noun-like or an adjective- like or Prepositional phrases discharging any of the above functions. More to it, participles are adjectives, gerunds nouns.

Barid Baran Acharya
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