Analyis of a sentence.

Question

in the following sentence: One teacher neatly described the teacher role as being blurred between teacher psychologist and friend.

what is the category of "blurred"? is it an adjective? and what about what follows? as being... Is it an adjectival complement?

Thank you!

Walter

Andriy Lapin · Accepted Answer

Dear Walter,

thank you for this interesting question.

First of all, blurred should be analysed in connection with being since being blurred is a non-finite complex verb phrase. The meaning of this part of the sentence is obviously passive; therefore, both formally and semantically, being blurred... is a nominal -ing participle clause, in which the participle is in the passive voice.

Secondly, being blurred... refers to the teacher role, which is the direct object of the verb described, the nominal clause adds to its characterisation. The syntactic function of being blurred... is that of an objective complement (also known as object predicative). However, in this very case we deal with the verb described as, which, as you can see, is a prepositional verb. It logically follows from this that the syntactic function of being blurred... is most aptly and precisely described as prepositional objective complement.

Respectfully, Gleb Chebrikoff.

CalifJim · Answer

Anonymouscategory of "blurred"? is it an adjective?

Yes.

Anonymouswhat about what follows?

Adjectival complement, as you say.

Compare:

Peter was undecided between the blue jacket and the green one.

CJ

WHIZZO · Answer

but in your example "undecided" is an adjective. "beig blurred" is in the passive, so blurred would be the verb blur in the passive.

WHIZZO · Answer

Thanks a lot. You helped me a lot.

CalifJim · Answer

WHIZZO"beig blurred" is in the passive, so blurred would be the verb blur in the passive.

No. blurred is an adjective. We could say that something is blurred or that it is very blurred or extremely blurred. Such adverbs of degree cannot be applied in the case of passives.

For example, we can say,

The money was stolen (by one of the employees).
But not,
*The money was extremely stolen (by one of the employees).

We can say,
The tarts were eaten (by the children).
But not,
*The tarts were very eaten (by the children).

The fact that you can use very or extremely with the word blurred (in the context above) shows that it is an adjective.

CJ

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