Friday, October 20, 2017

adjectives - When can verbal passives be used in secondary predicates?

In a paper I read, on the fifth page (labelled "359"), it says resultative secondary predicates can only be stative adjectival passives. For example, "John hammered the metal flat" is valid but "John hammered the metal flattened" is not. However, there are other secondary predicates that don't follow this rule. "I prefer my food salted" uses "salted," a resultative, as a secondary predicate. Also, "This software comes pre-installed by the manufacturer" is a valid sentence, but I don't think "pre-installed" is an adjectival passive, so I am not quite sure about the rules on secondary predicates and passives.

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