In Chapter 3, when we studied the meaning of verbs, we found that the great majority are dynamic in meaning; that is, they denote events, happenings and actions which have beginnings and ends and develop through time. But there were a few verbs that denote states of affairs: He knows the way describes his state of mind, and we do not find it sensible to say *What he did was know the way, or *What happened was that he knew the way. Adjectives are essentially stative in meaning. They denote static situations, as when one says: Jack is angry. Being angry is a state of affairs, even if it has only a brief duration. If we wish to describe a change in the state of affairs, we can say Jack became angry. The dynamic part of the meaning is not associated with the adjective, but with the verb become. The adjective angry still denotes only the state; when the ‘becoming’ was over, the anger was there. One thing that is observable about a stative expression is that it does not normally make sense to tell people to ‘do it’. Sentences like Shout to him (which are said to be in the imperative mood—see Chapter 5, pp. 77–8) have the meaning of asking the addressee to take some action. They have to be dynamic to make sense. On the other hand, Know the way does not make any ordinary sense, because knowing is not an action. Similarly, with the verb be and an adjective we cannot normally use the imperative mood: *Be hungry. There is, however, one important respect in which expressions of the form ‘be+adjective’ do make sense, and this is if the adjective can be interpreted as referring to somebody’s behaviour. *Be hungry is not sensible, but Be serious is. We interpret Be serious as an injunction to behave, for the present occasion at least, in a serious manner. Similarly, it is not easy to interpret *He is being hungry, because be hungry is inevitably seen as meaning a state of affairs; but He is being serious is sensible provided we interpret be serious as dynamic.
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