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In the sentence

He is gone

Is 'is' a a helping verb, as if to say "he has gone". Or is "gone" a complement meaning not present?

cobaltduck
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William
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    Gone is an adjective. – sooeithdk Feb 22 '16 at 02:36
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    You can consider gone to be either an adjective or a part of the composite verb is gone (as gone is the past participle of go). I think it legally parses either way, and, to my knowledge, there is no difference in meaning, regardless of which way you parse it. But things like past participles make my head hurt. – Hot Licks Feb 22 '16 at 03:44
  • @HotLicks What do you mean by a composite verb? An auxiliary plus a main verb? Is forms the passive voice, which isn't going to work for the intransitive go. – deadrat Feb 22 '16 at 04:09
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    @sooeithdk Better to say that gone is a past participle functioning as a complement. You can compare and grade adjectives. You can't do that with gone. – deadrat Feb 22 '16 at 04:11
  • Whether you can grade an adjective or not is no criterion for the word class adjective. A lot of adjectives are not gradable: dead, mathematical etc. Gone is the past participle of to go and it is an adjective (not before a noun). See http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/gone – rogermue Feb 22 '16 at 04:20
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    It's a vestige of the old way of saying these. He is come, is gone, is risen, is fallen, is become Death. – tchrist Feb 22 '16 at 04:58
  • @deadrat You can't do it with 'absent' either. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 22 '16 at 15:42
  • He’s not really gone is he? Yes, he’s dead and truly gone... I knew he was gone but I didn’t think he was gone gone. – Jim Sep 14 '16 at 21:45

1 Answers1

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The quick answer is that in the sentence "He is gone" is is a linking verb, and "gone" is an adjective, a subject complement.

The question gets interesting (read: "contentious") when it gets to "gone."

While it's the past participle of "to go," and expresses a similar-but-different meaning in the sentence "He had gone," that's not the case in the sentence given here.

M-W is pretty unequivocal:

Full Definition of gone Adjective 1 a : lost, ruined (lost looks and gone faculties — Penelope Gilliatt) b : dead c : characterized by sinking or dropping (the empty or gone feeling in the abdomen so common in elevators — H. G. Armstrong) 2 a : involved, absorbed (far gone in hysteria) b : possessed with a strong attachment or a foolish or unreasoning love or desire : infatuated —often used with on (was real gone on that man — Pete Martin) c : pregnant (she's six months gone 3 : past (memories of gone summers — John Cheever)

...and so on.

Rob_Ster
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  • The problem is that if you look at the definition of "gone" you get the adjective, and, if you're lucky, just a link to the fact that "gone" is also the past participle of "go". You have to consult the definition of "go" to get the full picture. – Hot Licks Feb 22 '16 at 04:23
  • Yup. It just goes to show how hard it is to learn English out of a book. Books are linear and logical; English - not so much. :-) – Rob_Ster Feb 22 '16 at 04:34