Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[bakum123]

what is the part of speech of the word for "like" in the following sentence
" what's the weather like?" and also can adjectives have its objectives grammatically? and then what kinds of adjectives can have adjectives?
please, enumerate some for me.

God bless everybody!!

[cgage2]

In your question "like" is a preposition. This sounds confusing until you answer: "It Is like this" which is to say "It is as this"

-can adjectives have its objectives grammatically?-
Good question. If like can be a preposition then it can have an object.

If an adjective has its own modifier then that modifier is called an adverb.
"The tree is very tall. "tall" is the adjective, "very is an adverb"
So any adjective could have a modifier (adverb).

[bakum123]

and then how about this
"the book is worth reading."
in above sentence, "worth" is adjective and "reading" is objective of adjective"worth" as gerund, i think.

[cgage2]

Yes that sounds correct. As in "the book is worth the reading"
Worth is an adjective; "the reading" is a noun clause

[bakum123]

so I mean even adjectives can have objectives as well as verbs, prepositions. We call this usage "the exceptional usage of adjective."
Resultly speaking, in the sentence"what's the weather like", we can rephrase it like this, the weather is like what." therefore the weather is subjective, is is verb, like is a complement in this case, so this sentence is perfect grammatically but its meaning is not perfect. so we have to make up its meaning adding the word "something" account for "what"
"The weather is like"- grammatical structure is perfect.
"The weather is like"- its meaning is imperfect.
My opinion is that "like" is an adjective not a preposition in this case rather than yours.
God bless you

[lotus]

Hi bakum123,

"Like" (similar to) in your case is a preposition expressing similarity, as cgage2 indicated. Think of the sentence as "The weather is like what?" with the corresponding "The weather is like this."

"Like this" has "like" as the preposition and "this" as the pronoun (see the second link with "This tastes like lobster").

"Like" cannot be an adjective in this case because it means "similar to" and not "similar." You can modify weather by saying "similar weather", but not "similar to weather." Same reasoning goes with "what."

Also, you will see from the second link (near the bottom) that "What is the weather like?" is a common expression asking "How?"

There are many discussions on the use of "like" as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, conjunction or filler. The controversy is mainly with its use as a conjunction.

Good discussions on its use as a conjunction are in the third and fourth links. An exception which I find valid is "She does it like no one else can." Using "as" here instead of "like" would not sound as emphatic.

As always, English is dynamic in terms of usage. Know the rules, but be wary of exceptions. Once you are comfortable with the exceptions, you have mastered the language.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv156.shtml
http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/grammar/archive/like01.html
http://www.bartleby.com/64/C001/033.html
http://www.grammartips.homestead.com/like.html


--lotus
_________________
War does not make one great --Yoda