3. The problem of the category of state There is a class of words in English with the following morphological,
semantic and syntactic characteristics:
1) The words of this type denote “states” while adjectives denote “qualities”;
2) The words of this type may be characterized by the prefix
a- (it derives
from the Middle English preposition
an ‘in, on’):
alive, asleep, ajar, etc .;
3) The words of this type do not possess the category of the degrees of
comparison;
4) The words of this type are used predicatively only,
e.g. He is awake .
Because of the said features, these words are regarded by some grammarians
as a separate part of speech which has been variously referred to as the category of
state words, adlinks, and statives (B. Ilyish; B. S. Khaimovich and B. I.
Rogovskaya). The number of such words does not exceed several dozen. The
traditional view of the stative, which separates temporary adjectives from other
adjectives, does not seem to be convincing: temporary adjectives are part and
parcel of the adjective class as a whole. At the same time, we must admit that these
adjectives have features (meaning, function) that allow us to assign them to a
separate subclass of the adjective. But the features examined are not sufficient for
the distinction of the category of state within the adjective.
