Depictive adjunct? Some sort of an adverbial?
Hello everyone,
So I've got a quick question for you all. A song came on the other day by Kane Brown. It was "Used to Love You Sober," and the refrain (refrain? chorus? I don't know!) is simply this: "I used to love you sober." It occurred to me that there are two possible, perfectly reasonable interpretations here:
I (Kane Brown) used to love you [when you were sober].
I (Kane Brown) used to love you [when I (Kane Brown) was sober].
Now, ultimately, it's a song, and I'm not interested in learning the song's "actual" meaning or interpretation. I'm just curious -- from a grammatical, syntactical standpoint -- how one would analyze this construction.
Is "sober" a depictive adjunct modifying "you"? Is it an adverb in the same way that "often" in "I used to cook eggs often" is an adverb? Would both analyses be "valid"?
Thanks in advance!
Top answer
The adjective "sober" is an optional depictive - a predicative adjunct to be precise, with either "I" (Kane Brown) or the referent of "you" as predicand (hence 'predicative'), depending on the writer's intention. As a predicative adjunct, it doesn't modify the predicand, but is a modifier in clause structure.
- The adjective "sober" is an optional depictive - a predicative adjunct to be precise, with either "I" (Kane Brown) or the referent of "you" as predicand (hence 'predicative'), depending on the writer's intention.
- As a predicative adjunct, it doesn't modify the predicand, but is a modifier in clause structure.
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The adjective "sober" is an optional depictive - a predicative adjunct to be precise, with either "I" (Kane Brown) or the referent of "you" as predicand (hence 'predicative'), depending on the writer's intention.
As a predicative adjunct, it doesn't modify the predicand, but is a modifier in clause structure.
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