In terms of what I’ve seen: “Adjectival passives always have stative interpretations, whereas verbal passives can either have a dynamic or a stative interpretation.”
So…. If I have a sentence, such as:
“The buildings are owned by him.”
Would this be a verbal stative passive, or just an adjectival passive?
Obviously I can transform it to:
“He owns the buildings.”
But to me, it almost seems like it’s active even in the “passive” (air-quotes just in case) version. Like, if I change “be” to, say:
The buildings “remain” owned by him..”
Or
“The buildings “seem” owned by him”
It obviously fails the “very” test, but the above two tests seem to work out. See:
“The buildings are very owned by him (ungrammatical).”
But doesn’t the ability to switch “be” with “remain” or “seem” imply it could be an adjective here?
Thus, I guess my question is, how can I tell if this, or other constructions with stative verbs are “verbal” stative passives, or simply “adjectival” passives?
