Teacher Discussion Forums

When we say "I'm well", is the word "well" an adverb or an adjective? My opinion is that it must be an adjective because it's being used this way with the verb "to be", and I've seen it described as such. The strange thing is that it's not just in English where the adverb form of "good" is used to mean "healthy, fine" - for example "bene" in Italian and "kala" in Greek, and I'm sure there must be other examples. (In fact Greek grammarians refer to it still as an adverb.)

So what's going on here? You might think that it's just a strange irregularity, but this seems incredible when it's replicated in other languages.

All of the languages you are referring to are from the same language family so there is nothing incredible at all about them having the same construction.

It depends on what you mean by "language family". I certainly wouldn't put Greek in with Romance/Latinate languages - it's always considered to be a separate branch.

What would be interesting would be to find out how many other languages have the same feature, especially completely unrelated languages.

Have also now found out that this phenomenon also occurs in Hindi. Now you could argue that all these languages are part of the Proto Indo-European family, but this covers such a huge range of languages that I stick to my original comment about it being incredible.

So what did the jury decide on the adjective/adverb thing?

If it were only used with "be" it might be some kind of aberration but it's even more clearly an adjective in other cases : "Do you feel well?" "You're looking well" "Well Woman Clinic" etc.

They all belong to the Indo-European family; proto-indo-european is the name given to a reconstructed ancestor of all indo-european languages.

It is quite normal for the more basic parts of a language to be related. Often phonetic changes may mean that a word in one language does not have a single phoneme in common with that in another, and yet they are the same word.

Hindi is an Indo-European language.

but this covers such a huge range of languages that I stick to my original comment about it being incredible.

Evidentally had no training in philology.
Incidentally there are millions of different species of insects but they all have the same basic body plan.

Steven I know all this. I have a degree in Linguistics so please try to avoid being quite so condescending.

The languages in the Indo-European family DO form a "huge range", as I said. Just as there are, as you say, millions of insects conforming to the same body plan. The expression "huge range" does not preclude any similarities or relationship, so I don't see why you have a problem with that comment - are you suggesting that EVERYTHING in all the Indo-European languages is related? If not, then there's no reason to be so sure that the "well phenomenon" is just down to the Indo-European origin of the languages I mention.

The fact remains that the similarities that have been noted between Indo-European languages are mostly in terms of individual vocabulary items and inflectional morphology (compare, for example, how verbs in Italian and Greek conjugate, although they are on different branches in the Indo-European "language tree"), rather than individual grammar phenomena of the kind I'm talking about. Can you prove that the adjectival use of the words "well", "bene", "kala" and "acha" is actually related? If not, then there's no particular reason to accept your argument that this phenomenon is just based on some kind of Proto-Indo-European root, rather than some other process.

Like I said before, what we need to find most is whether or not the same thing occurs in non Indo-European languages. Why not wait until someone can help us out on that before rubbishing these ideas again?

I've now looked this up in my etymology dictionary. It has this to say on the adjectival use: "Developed from the adverb in impersonal uses, e.g. wel is pe". Doesn't illuminate it very much for me, but certainly seems to suggest this is a comparatively modern usage.

I worked in Turkey before Poland.

Turkish hardly ever uses the verb to be, it is just implied. However, the personal suffixes seem to imply it. In Turkish "İyi" means anything vaguely good and "İyiyim" is the Turkish for I am well. The Polish is "Jestem dobrze" Lit: "Am well." The German is "Mir ist gut."

Don't really know how this fits in with your theory, though.

Thanks Andrew. I did actually have a look at Turkish (it being a non Indo-European language with an alphabet I can understand!) - it seems that "iyi" covers "good", as well as the adjective and adverb forms of "well". I'm not sure whether it helps us, as you say, but the problem is I don't actually have a theory for what's happening in these cases! That's what I'm trying to find out.

It's occured to me that something similar happens with words for "late". In Greek the adverb form of "late", as in "The train arrived late" is also used as an adjective with the meaning of "late in the day", e.g. "It's a bit late to go out now". I'm not sure how similar this is to the usage of "well", because in English and Italian it seems that the reverse is happening - it seems like the adjective is actually used as an adverb, although I'd have to know more about the history of these words to know whether they were used first as adjectives or adverbs (I wonder whether "lately" was ever used in the sense of "The train arrived lately".) Also, in English "late" is also used as an adjective with the meaning of "not on time", but not in Greek and Italian.

Perhaps a little close to the "well phenomenon" is the word "early", which in Greek and English has the form of an adverb, but is used as an adjective (but not, I think, in Italian (i.e. we have "in anticipo" as adjective and "prematuro" as adverb for the meaning of "ahead of time", but "tardi" for "late in the day")). I'd be interested to learn how this compares to other Indo-European and non Indo-European languages.

It does seem to me though that there might well be some other process affecting all this.

What I am criticizing is that for some reason you find it surprising that the same construction occurrs over a range of languages.

It is also not at all clear exactly what you find surprising. As others have pointed out the distinnction between adjectives and adverbs is an artificial one. It does not surprise me that ssome of the most common lexemes are those where the distinction is least clear.

Finding the same phenomenum in other language families will mean nothing. It is quite common for unrelated languages to develop similar forms independently (in evolutionary biology the process is called 'convergence'). For example neither Arabic nor Sinhala use the copula but one is a Semitic language and the other is Indo-European, and the trait developed quite independently.

OK, you're right in that that language phenomena can develop independently in languages and that this in itself is no big deal. I initially found the situation with "well" in English a little strange but nothing more, but when I thought about it more and realised that it's replicated in every other language that I know, and all others that I've been able to investigate, I was surprised - it seemed that something else might be going on. It's particularly strange in a language like Greek which is heavily inflected - "kala" used as an adjective doesn't change for gender case or number, which is very unusual for a Greek adjective and shows that it's definitely an adverb form being used in a way that wouldn't ordinarily fit into the grammar of the language.

Remember - as linguists we are always interested in traits that can be found across languages, because these are what tell us most about the nature of language itself. So I don't agree with you at all that finding the same thing in other language families would "mean nothing". If this were the case then linguists would not have come up with the "principles and parameters theory" - that there are universal features that can be found across all languages. Yet this is a very influencial linguistic theory. Think too of Proto-Indo-European - this was reconstructed on the basis, as you say, of looking at the kinds of phonemic changes that occur in all languages, and this helped to show that a seemingly disparate group of languages were in fact related. But this would not have been possible had linguists not considered it surprising that certain phonemic changes in words occured in many languages, and hence wondered if there was a universal process going on.

So what I'm really interested in is whether there is some kind of universal process that brings about the "well phenomenon", how common it is (as I said, the surprising thing is that it affects every single language I've been able to consider), and what kind of words it affects. If someone can come up with a list of languages large enough to convince me that it's just a fluke that all the languages I've come across feature this phenomenon then fine, I'm with you. But if we continue to find the phenomenon replicated again and again then I want to know why.

Tara B wrote:So what did the jury decide on the adjective/adverb thing?

I'm not sure. But from another thread (http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/v ... php?t=3878) in this forum, I read:

ssean wrote:...one criteria of whether the word is being used as verb or an adjective, can you put very or really infront of it, if so the 'be' would be acting as a copula ie He was (really) amused by the film.

or in this instance: I am very well. So I would guess adjective. The key word here is guess. Pretty soon someone will point out why I'm wrong (kind of like being married), but that's ok, it's a learning opportunity!

OK Dulard, here's why you're wrong...

You can use very with adverbs too e.g. He speakes English very badly, so it proves nothing about whether a word is an adjective or adverb.

However, the following occurred to me...

Unwell is clearly an adjective, while badly is clearly an adverb. So, compare The dog is very well/unwell (but not badly) with I speak Swahili very well/badly (but not unwell). Isn't this a case for arguing that well can be either, depending on the context? This should only pose a problem for those that insist that every word should fit into one, and only one, box. After all, well, bien, bem, bene etc are all irregular and perhaps it's not that radical to propose that they behave a differently from other adjectives and adverbs.

I agree with lolwhites here, very doesn't prove anything. "Well" can be an adjective or adverb depending on context. (I believe there is a thread that is trying to define context right now.)