become

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A. He became recognised. Is 'recognised' an adjective or a transitive past participle? Please help.

AlpheccaStars · Accepted Answer

tenjing A. He became recognised. Is 'recognised' an adjective or a transitive past participle? Please help.

Why is it important what label you give it? It really depends on which grammatical system you use. Just pick one, and be consistent.

Some would call it a predicate adjective. Others may call it a subject complement.

Fivejedjon · Answer

AlpheccaStarsWhy is it important what label you give it?

I have nothing to add to that. I just thought it was worth showing for a second time.

RandomGuy · Answer

tenjingHe became recognised. Is 'recognised' an adjective

Yes. Adjective phrases, not past participial clauses, function as complement to verbs like become, seem, appear. So recognized must be an adjective.

AlpheccaStarsWhy is it important what label you give it?

Well, calling it a verb (participle), for example, is likely to get you into trouble. You may as a result produce ungrammatical sentences like *He became considered guilty of adultery.

CalifJim · Answer

Aspara GusWell, calling it a verb (participle), for example, is likely to get you into trouble. You may as a result produce ungrammatical sentences like *He became considered guilty of adultery.

I just can't pass up an opportunity to put my two cents in here.

ESL students are often asked to put labels on words in sentences just for the sake of keeping them busy or for the sake of preparing them for exams which require this kind of knowledge. The thought that these students should actually use this knowledge in constructing sentences of their own escapes them (the students and their teachers) completely. So I think the kind of "getting into trouble" you describe is all but impossible in the world of students learning a foreign language.

The fine points of the descriptive labels that you are talking about here are more appropriate for those who work in artificial intelligence, where the robots they build, or whatever, do in fact construct sentences on the basis of how their built-in dictionaries label the lexical items. (That's because robots can't understand the sentences they're programmed to produce.) I don't think that human beings acquire language by consulting such a mass of computer data every time they need to form even a single sentence. Consequently, I don't see any gain for the student in wasting time deciding whether a word is a past participle or an adjective. Many grammar books say that past participles can be used as adjectives. Isn't that "enough said" on the subject (at least for the non-robots)?
_________

Besides, I became seen to be totally lost by that last sentence (became considered guilty).

I don't know how it struck others, but I thought it was rather cryptic. What does it even illustrate?

If I, a native speaker, can't figure this out, I don't know how the students can.

CJ

RandomGuy · Answer

CalifJimBesides, I became seen to be totally lost by that last sentence (became considered guilty).
I don't know how it struck others, but I thought it was rather cryptic. What does it even illustrate?

It should have been very clear that it illustrates “getting into trouble”.
The OP wanted to know whether recognized in He became recognized was a participle or an adjective. If I had answered (wrongly) that it was a participle, i.e., a verb, then I would have been implying that become could take participial complements, such as considered guilty. This could therefore lead to ungrammatical constructions like *become considered guilty. I don’t see how that’s “all but impossible”; it seems very possible to me!

And if you want cryptic, try

CalifJim…that past participles can be used as adjectives

which is ambiguous as to whether the word is a verb or an adjective. So no, it’s not “enough said”. In some cases, and I believe this is one, the distinction is important. Verbs and adjectives differ significantly in terms of the dependents they take (notice that considered has a PC in considered guilty, for example), and as I’ve pointed out only the latter occur as complement to certain linking verbs.

CalifJim · Answer

Aspara Gusambiguous as to whether the word is a verb or an adjective

OK. Let me ask you this, because I've never quite understood it.

Is it possible in the methodology you follow to answer the question below? And if so, what's the answer? And if not, why not?

What part of speech is "recognized"? (Which lexical category does "recognized" belong to?)

CJ

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