Discussion Groups / English Usage / November 2006

This is not an adverbial use.  I don't know the name for it, but there's
a class of verbs such as "feel", "look", "seem", and "act" that are
commonly used with an adjective.  "Feel big", "look cold", "seem hungry",
"act disrespectful".

"Act disrespectfully" would also be correct, but it's a different
construction that happens to work out to the same meaning.

I think this is not a so much a non-"traditional" usage as an established
one that prescriptivists have tried to eliminate.  Does someone have time
to look up how old it is?

Is there a change?

Not that I know of, but: one, it is a major, long-developing,
continuing, important  trend in the development of modern English; and
two, I don't think that is an example of it.

The trend I mean is that of treating ever more verbs as copulative.  A
copulative verb is one that does not actually predicate, but only acts
as a formal "placeholder" expressing a connection or equality between
the subject and the nominal or formal predicate, such that that
"predicate"--applying to the subject noun, not the connecting
verb--needs to be adjectival, not adverbial.  (Another common name for
copulative verbs is "linking verbs".)

The superlative copulative verb is "be", which is always and ever
copulative: "He is strong", never "He is strongly".  There is no hard
and fast list of or rule for selecting or recognizing other copulative
verbs, but as they generally suggest a *connection* between the subject
and the nominal predicate, they are typically verbs of "seeming", such
as (in some instances depending on the particular sense intended):
appear, become, come, fall, feel, get, go, grow, happen, keep, leave
off, lie, look, loom, prove, rank, remain, rest, run, seem, sit, smell,
sound, stand, stay, taste, turn, turn out.

As can be seen, all of those--in at least one sense of each--are verbs
chiefly relating some quality to the subject: "it loomed large in his
legend", "the well ran dry", " the air smelled damp", and so on.  In
most or all cases, we could replace the subject verb with a simple "be"
(or whatever form of "be" is appropriate for the context)--but, did we
do so, we would lose some of the sense or tone of the linking.  That is
the point of and strength of copulative verbs: they allow us to express
the equivalence that "be" does, but shade or modulate our expressed
sense of the equivalence by using a verb that more precisely expresses
the nature or form the equivalence takes.

The modern tendency to construe more and more verbs as copulative is
thus, by and large, A Good Thing, in that it expands our ability to
express our thoughts with precision and elegance.

It is not, of course, that most, or even many, users of the tongue have
ever heard the phrase "copulative verb", or made a conscious decision
about the form to use or its grammatical significance. The key, and
what undoubtedly drives their choice, is a clear intuition that the
relation between subject and predicate is one of correspondence, not
true full predication, whether or not they know those terms.

All that said, I think the particular example given was simply the sort
of swapping of horses mid-stream that often happens in spontaneous
speech: most likely what was meant was either "the idea that I would
act disrespectfully towards a fellow musician is unimaginable to me" or
"the idea that I would be disrespectful to a fellow musician is
unimaginable to me", with the two getting mixed in the saying.

Likewise, to "run quick" is a malaprop, but quite likely arises from
the increasing tendency noted above, in that many speakers now find the
copulative sense as natural as--or even more natural than--the more
common predicative finite sense for many verbs, especially (it seems)
common, short ones, even when that choice is in error.

It is worth noting that virtually all style and usage manuals concur
that adjectives are inherently more effective (or "powerful") than
adverbs: adjectives are strong, adverbs weak.  The statement in classic
older form--

"The subdivisions operate independently of the parent company."

--now feels needlessly "stuffy" to many sensibilities, which find--

"The subdivisions operate independent of the parent company."

--much more natural, with "operate" being construed as copulative,
connecting (in a particular way) the adjectival quality of independence
to the subject noun "subdivisions", rather than describing the manner
in which subdivisions perform their operating.

In a great many uses either form, adjective or adverb, can be used--

"He managed it all single-handed[ly]."

--with the choice of assigning the suggested quality to the act or the
actor being up to the writer or speaker.  But, as stated, the
increasing trend in modern English is--whenever there is a plausible
option--to associate the quality with the actor rather than the act,
which (also as noted) does tend toward more effective prose.

It's a red-neckism.