Re: English question

At 05:21 PM 11/28/2001 +0100, you wrote:
>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.

   Since no one else has answered definitively, I will.

   It IS an adverb. It's an old pattern which reduces a prepositional
phrase to a single word adverb, like the "I go home" example someone else
gave. In that sentence, 'home' is short for "to home", just as 'Liberal' is
short for "for the Liberal party".

   Actually, now that I think about it a bit more, it could be a noun in
indirect object position as well. I think this parsing of it is probably
more accurate (by Occam's razor, it's the simplest).

   Aidan

Reply