Re: English question

In a message dated 11/28/01 11:21:24 AM, OneOfThree@GMX.NET writes:

>Hi.
>
>In my English lessons the following question occured:
>
>"He voted Liberal." - Is the 'Liberal' an adjective or an adverb?
>I would say it is an adverb since it is part of the verb but on the other
>hand it describes the party.
>
>It would be very nice of you to help me.
>
>thx
>
>Stefan
I don't know if there is a definitive answer for this. Look at the following:
"How did he vote?" "He voted Liberal." Here it seems to be an adverb.
"What did he vote?" "He voted Liberal." Here it seems to be a noun.
Of course, you would usually use the preposition "for" in the second case,
but it can be elided.

I don't think it's an adjective. Some verbs can take adjective after them,
e.g.:
"He felt good."
"He was good."
but you can't say (or at least I can't):
*"He voted good." If you can't use the adjective "good" here, you shouldn't
be able to use other adjectives either. You have to use an adverb form: "He
voted well."

Pondering some more.... You can say "He voted Liberal into office."
This has two meanings for me.
1) If I take "Liberal" as a noun, it means that he voted for (the) Liberal
(party), and Liberal went into office - it was elected.
2) If I take it as an adverb, it means that Liberal was the party he voted
for (i.e. the WAY in which he voted), but Liberal didn't necessarily get
elected. He did do the voting, however, as he himself was going into office.

In your example, I still think it can be either a N or an Adv.

Hope that helps a bit....

Josh Roth
http://members.aol.com/fuscian/eloshtan.html

Reply