# meine Seele spannte weit ihre Flügel aus (Eichendorff) - weit: Adjective/adverb?



## alberto29

Hallo!
I'm doing the translation of a german poem called "Mondnacht" by Eichendorff. On the first two stanzas the poet describes the night and its little noises and characteristics. The last stanza is like this:

"*und meine Seele spannte
weit ihre Flügel aus*
flog durch die stillen Lande
als flöge sie nach Haus"

The thing is that I don't really know if the word "weit" works here as an adverb of the verb "spannte" or it's and adjective for "ihre Flügel" for saying that the soul has gone out of the body or something like that.

Danke!


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## Demiurg

It's clearly an adverb. An adjective would be inflected and in a different position: _spannte ihre weiten Flügel aus_.


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## Hutschi

The phrase is "die Flügel *weit ausspannen*".
I give you a prosa version:

Und meine Seele spannte ihre Flügel weit aus.
And my soul spread out widely her wings.
Sie flog durch die stillen Lande, als ob sie nach Hause flöge.
She flew across the silent regions/shores as if she flew home.

I'd say poetically it is like
She lew across the silent shires ...

"Lande" is poetically for "Landgebiete", not for "Länder".


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## Dan2

My initial reaction was the same as Demi's: clearly an adverb.

Now, the obvious English translation for the phrase is "spread wide its wings".  Since English regularly distinguishes adjectives and adverbs (in this case, "wide" vs "widely"), the question arises why I opt for the adjective form and why "widely" seems deviant here.

The answer seems to be that "wide" describes not _the manner in which the spreading is done_ but rather the form of the wings _as a result of the spreading. _The wings have spread and are now wide (wings), thus an adjective.

Getting back to the German, I wonder if I'm being overly influenced by English in suggesting that "weit" is not necessarily an adverbial modifier of ausspannen, that a possible interpretation of the phrase is,
_meine Seele spannte ihre Flügel aus, damit sie dann weit waren (als Folge davon waren sie weit)_
Note that "weit" is an adjective here.

This analysis would be similar to what one would say about "Er wurde müde": "müde", despite following a verb, is not an adverbial modifier of the verb (describing in what manner the becoming happened), but rather an adjectival description of the _result_ of the becoming.

In any case, however one analyzes the German phrase, if Alberto is doing a translation of it to  English, I suggest "wide".


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## Hutschi

I think there is another difference between adverb and adjective in German than in English. They are formal classes in German.
During the spelling reform some of the reformers even tried to change adverbs to nouns (es tut mir Leid) - but this was revised.
I am not sure whether the direct translations of the grammatical categories are fully exact: Adverb = adverb/ Adjektiv= adjective(?).

I our case we have another problem, we do not translate Adverbs to adverbs or Adjective to adjectives, but poetic sentences or phrases.

We see this in Demiurgs example: _spannte ihre weiten Flügel aus_. - this is the German usage of adjectives - or better Adjektiven (?).

So in German it is clearly an Adverb.
But if we translate, we consider more than formal word forms.

We do not have the "...ly" difference in German.

You can translate "Spread wide its wings (is the soul neuter in English?).

This would become German "spreizte/spannte ihre Flügel weit".

In #3 I used "widely" but the reason was I was not sure whether "wide" is correct in English.

"Flügel weit spannen" is a phrase, where "weit" modifies "Flügel spannen" rather than "spreizen" or "spannen" alone. You cannot use "weit" without a related object.


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## Dan2

Interesting comments, Hutschi.  I'd like to continue the discussion a  bit further (at least till the mods declare it off-topic...).

> I think there is another difference between adverb and adjective in German than in English. They are formal classes in German.
Why do you think they're not formal classes in English?

> During the spelling reform some of the reformers even tried to change adverbs to nouns (es tut mir Leid)
I think there are arguments for either analysis.  One needs to make a decision here only because it affects capitalization.

> In our case we have another problem, we _are _not translat_ing_ Adverbs to adverbs or Adjective to adjectives, but poetic sentences or phrases.
Right - note that I ended by saying that however one analyzes the German, for the English translation I suggest ...

> We see this in Demiurgs example: _spannte ihre weiten Flügel aus_. - this is the German usage of adjectives
We can of course do this in English too ("Spread its wide wings").  But this introduces a meaning difference. Here we have preexistingly-wide wings, which are then spread. But when a bird spreads its wings wide, we mean it changes the configuration of its wings from non-wide to wide.

> So in German it is clearly an Adverb.
Wait a minute!  The fact that we have a clear case (_ihre weiten Flügel_) of adjectival use of "weit" doesn't imply that some other, less clear, use is necessarily adverbial!

> But if we translate, we consider more than formal word forms.
No argument with this, as noted above.


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## Gernot Back

Hi Dan2,

I think you are thinking too much in terms of traditional Latin grammar here:


> Prädikativum nennt man ein Adjektiv, das in KNG mit einem Beziehungswort übereinstimmt, vom Sinn her aber eine adverbiale Bestimmung zum Prädikat darstellt. Ein prädikatives Adjektiv wird mit einem Adverb wiedergegeben.
> 
> 
> _Marcus laetus in hortum currit.__Marcus läuft froh in den Garten._
> 
> laetus stimmt zwar wie ein adjektivisches Attribut mit Marcus überein; es antwortet aber nicht auf die Frage „Was für ein?“, „Welcher?“, sondern auf die Frage „Wie?“, „Auf welche Weise?“. Deshalb ist es kein Attribut, sondern ein Prädikativum.


 http://www.ewetel.net/~martin.bode/Gramheft.pdf#page=34


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## Dan2

Whether I'm right or wrong in my speculation, Latin grammar, about which I know nothing (I'm really interested only in spoken languages), has nothing to do with it.

English actually allows both "Marcus is running happy in the garden" and "Marcus is running happily in the garden".  The first means essentially that Marcus is running in the garden, and, by the way, is happy (maybe better with commas around "happy").  In the second "happily" describes the manner of running.  So, yes, "happy" in the first sentence is "ein Adjektiv, das ... mit einem Beziehungswort übereinstimmt" but you certainly can't say that it "vom  Sinn her aber eine adverbiale Bestimmung zum Prädikat darstellt."

Consider these sentences:
_1. Paint the car red!
2. Paint the car slowly!_
The sentences look syntactically identical, but in the first case the result is a red (adj) car; in the second the result is _not _a slow car; "slowly" is an adverb that describes the action of the verb.  Corresponding examples can be constructed for German.  If you're unwilling to call "red" in (1) an adjective, at least admit that whatever it is, it is very different from the true adverb in (2).  I guess what I was really trying to do above was to make that claim with respect to
_Spread your wings wide!
_vs. something like
_Spread your wings slowly!_


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## fdb

A very interesting discussion! As I see it, German does not actually distinguish morphologically between adverbs and predicative adjectives. We touched on this in the recent discussion of voll/voller, where voll, as in “er ist voll Glaubens”, looks like an adverb or even a preposition, but is in fact (at least historically) a predicative adjective. In English there is a clear distinction between an adverb in –ly (plus the irregular adverbs like “well”) and an adjective without any ending. There is a very famous poem by Dylan Thomas beginning: “Do not go gentle into that good night”, where in prose one might be tempted to say “Do not go gently”, but where, in the poem, the adjective “gentle” is not only correct, but absolutely necessary. The poet is saying that we must not be gentle when we go into the night of death. And here too in “spannte weit ihre Flügel aus” = “spread its wings out wide”, in English as least “wide” is an adjective (“spread its wings, with the result that they were wide”), but in German the adjective/adverb distinction is blurred.


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## Hutschi

Dan2 said:


> Interesting comments, Hutschi.  I'd like to continue the discussion a  bit further (at least till the mods declare it off-topic...).
> 
> > I think there is another difference between adverb and adjective in German than in English. They are formal classes in German.
> Why do you think they're not formal classes in English?
> _
> I do not think this. I just wanted to say that they are formal in German. I did not speak about English here._
> 
> > During the spelling reform some of the reformers even tried to change adverbs to nouns (es tut mir Leid)
> I think there are arguments for either analysis.  One needs to make a decision here only because it affects capitalization.
> 
> _In this special case the noun has another meaning. "Es tut mir leid"= "I'm sorry", "Es tut mir Leid"_= "it injures me/hurts me"=elliptic form for: Es tut mir Leid/Leides an.
> 
> > In our case we have another problem, we _are _not translat_ing_ Adverbs to adverbs or Adjective to adjectives, but poetic sentences or phrases.
> Right - note that I ended by saying that however one analyzes the German, for the English translation I suggest ...
> 
> > We see this in Demiurgs example: _spannte ihre weiten Flügel aus_. - this is the German usage of adjectives
> We can of course do this in English too ("Spread its wide wings").  But this introduces a meaning difference.
> 
> _Exactly._
> 
> Here we have preexistingly-wide wings, which are then spread. But when a bird spreads its wings wide, we mean it changes the configuration of its wings from non-wide to wide.
> 
> _So it is the same meaning as in the German poem, and you use an adjective in English._
> 
> > So in German it is clearly an Adverb.
> Wait a minute!  The fact that we have a clear case (_ihre weiten Flügel_) of adjectival use of "weit" doesn't imply that some other, less clear, use is necessarily adverbial!
> _
> Of course, you are right. It is the same logic as "They are formal classes in German."
> "Why do you think they're not formal classes in English?"
> _
> _In German school grammar it is strange. I learned that in "der Flügel ist weit" it is an adjective, but in "Er streckt den Flügel weit" it is an adverb. I never understood this fully, for me it seems to be illogical.
> (By the way; there are German grammars which omitted the adverbs from word classes fully.)_
> ...



Without considering word classes, I'd translate after the discussion "spread its wings out wide” as you.
A question: Is "out" necessary or is it just style?


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## Gernot Back

Dan2 said:


> _1. Paint the car red!
> 2. Paint the car slowly!_


This reminds me of the standard example I always used to explain the difference between a predicative and an adverbial adjective to my students, when I worked as a teacher.

Depending on context,

_Ich finde das Auto schnell._​
... , can mean two different things:

In:

_Mensch, dein Auto fährt ja eine Spitzengeschwindigkeit 200 km/h!
Ich finde dein Auto schnell!_​
... it means that I think that your car is _fast_ and _schnell_ is a predicative adjective, whereas in:

_Mach dir keine Sorgen, du hast mir ja die genaue Parkplatznummer genannt!
Ich finde dein Auto schnell!_​
... it means that the process of searching the car won't take long, _I will find it quickly_, and schnell is an adverb.
When translating this as _I will find it fast_ in this second context, the distinction between adverb and predicative adjective would be just as "blurred", since the adverb _fast_ lacks the adverb marking _-ly_ ending and looks like the adjective _fast_.

In the above first context of _Ich finde das Auto schnell_ a predicative adjective _schnell_ is referring to the object of the sentence, whereas in the Latin example (_Marcus laetus in hortum currit_), _laetus_ is referring to the subject.



Dan2 said:


> The sentences look syntactically identical, but in the first case the result is a red (adj) car; in the second the result is _not _a slow car; "slowly" is an adverb that describes the action of the verb.  Corresponding examples can be constructed for German.  If you're unwilling to call "red" in (1) an adjective, at least admit that whatever it is, it is very different from the true adverb in (2).  I guess what I was really trying to do above was to make that claim with respect to
> _Spread your wings wide!
> _vs. something like
> _Spread your wings slowly!_



In the German sentence:

_Meine Seele spannte weit ihre Flügel aus_​
... there are even three possible interpretations. _Weit_ can refer either to the subject or the object of the sentence or it can be interpreted as an adverb.


_Meine Seele spannte als weite Seele ihre Flügel aus_. 
(adjective referring to the subject)
_Meine Seele spannte ihre Flügel als weite Flügel aus_. 
(adjective referring to the affected object)
_Meine Seele spannte ihre Flügel weit aus_. 
(Adverb referring to the degree in which the wings were *spread*)

Although _weit_ is clearly referring to a noun phrase in the interpretations #1 and #2, I hesitate to call _weit_ here a predicative adjective, because _predicative adjectives_ usually occur together with special verbs demanding them as complements, like copula verbs (_sein_, _werden_, _bleiben_), or verbs like _ansehen_, _finden_, _wähnen_ that attribute some property to the subject or an object of the sentence respectively.



			
				Wilhelm Busch said:
			
		

> Mit dem Löffel, groß und schwer, geht es über Spitzen her.


_ http://www.childrensbooksonline.org/max_und_moritz/pages/11_Max_und_Moritz.htm_
Some grammarians call that _unflektierte postponierte adjektivische Apposition_ (uninflected postponed adjectival apposition) as in



			
				Trost said:
			
		

> Dame, _gebildet, feinsinnig, belesen_ sucht Herrn, _gebildet, feinsinnig, belesen_.


http://books.google.de/books?id=d4f...v=onepage&q="adjektivische Apposition"&f=true
So that brings us back to adjectives as attributes.


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## berndf

fdb said:


> A very interesting discussion! As I see it, German does not actually distinguish morphologically between adverbs and predicative adjectives. We touched on this in the recent discussion of voll/voller, where voll, as in “er ist voll Glaubens”, looks like an adverb or even a preposition, but is in fact (at least historically) a predicative adjective.


Spot on. It is sometimes indeed very difficult to maintain distinction between a predicative adjective and an adjective-derived adverb in a language like German which has no morphological distinctions between the two.

Still, I think this is an adverb and I would argue that Dan's analogy in English is a misinterpretation what happens there:


Dan2 said:


> English actually allows both "Marcus is running happy in the garden" and "Marcus is running happily in the garden".  The first means essentially that Marcus is running in the garden, and, by the way, is happy (maybe better with commas around "happy").  In the second "happily" describes the manner of running.  So, yes, "happy" in the first sentence is "ein Adjektiv, das ... mit einem Beziehungswort übereinstimmt" but you certainly can't say that it "vom  Sinn her aber eine adverbiale Bestimmung zum Prädikat darstellt."
> 
> Consider these sentences:
> _1. Paint the car red!
> 2. Paint the car slowly!_
> The sentences look syntactically identical, but in the first case the result is a red (adj) car; in the second the result is _not _a slow car; "slowly" is an adverb that describes the action of the verb.  Corresponding examples can be constructed for German.  If you're unwilling to call "red" in (1) an adjective, at least admit that whatever it is, it is very different from the true adverb in (2).  I guess what I was really trying to do above was to make that claim with respect to
> _Spread your wings wide!
> _vs. something like
> _Spread your wings slowly!_


I think _to spread wide_ belongs to the same category as to come forward (clearly an adverb) rather than _to paint red_. The misinterpretation lies in my humble opinion in the idea that every adjective-derived adverb _has_ to end in _-ly_. This is mostly the case, but as you can see from the adverb _mostly_ (an adverb derived from an adverb) the original function of _-ly_ as a derivational suffix modifying the meaning rather than the syntactic function still peeks through.

The suffix _-ly_ is derived from OE _-lic_ (adjective) or _-lice_ (adverb) and means "like". I.e. it indicates an extended or figurative use. In the case of_ wide_, I think, the semantic difference between _wide _(_wide _was actually the OE adverbial derivation of _wid _and in Middle English the two forms merged and became also functionally difficult to disentangle, here) and _widely _("wide-like") persisted and the _-ly_ form could not take over all of the adverbial uses of wide. Compare the following examples:
_He spread his wings *wide* - Er spannte seine Flügel *weit*.
He used this *widely* - Er nutzte es *weitlich*.*
_______________________________
* Edit: It seems I was mistaken there. _Weitlich _never existed but occurrences you find in some texts are spelling mistakes for either _weidlich_ or _weltlich_._


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## Dan2

berndf said:


> Still, I think this is an adverb and I would argue that Dan's analogy in English is a misinterpretation what happens there:
> I think _to spread wide_ belongs to the same category as to come forward (clearly an adverb) rather than _to paint red_.


I actually agree that "spread wide" is not as clear a case as "paint red".  But I don't think it's in the same category as "come forward".  Note that wings that have been spread wide might be referred to as "wide wings" (like the red car), while a person who comes forward cannot be referred to as a "forward person".


berndf said:


> The misinterpretation lies in my humble opinion in the idea that every adjective-derived adverb _has_ to end in _-ly_.


_I_ certainly don't believe this.  I not only drive "fast" (which everyone accepts, at least grammatically), but also, when conditions demand, drive "slow" (which the purists object to).  Going in the other direction, English is well known to have -ly words that _aren't_ adverbs (for ex., "friendly", "daily").

So, right, the absence of -ly doesn't necessarily indicate that "wide" is an adjective.  But the following must be accounted for.  (I use "*" to indicate unacceptability.)
1. The bird spread its wings wide/*widely.
2a. The revolutionaries spread their message *wide/widely.
2b. The disease spread *wide/widely.

The facts in 1 vs 2 would certainly seem to be related to the possibility of talking about "wide wings" vs the impossibility of "wide message" or "wide disease".

But again, I admit that the ground is shakier here than in the case of "paint red".  I'll simply return to the conclusions of my two previous posts, respectively: Alberto should use "wide" in an English translation; and whatever "wide" is in "spread wide", it's a different animal from the canonical adverb "slowly" in "spread slowly".


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## alberto29

Hello everyone,
I've read all the comments you have written in this conversation, and I have to say that my domain of german is still too low to understand all the examples that you have used on your posts, but I'm very grateful that this topic had also be interesting for high-level students/teachers.

But the true reason because I'm doing a translation of this poem is that I want to put it to music and, apart of having a good translation of the poem for getting the most exact idea of it, I wanted to know if "weit ausspannen" is a unity of meaning in the sense that the possible dependence of "weit" on "spannte" is so big that theses two words should always appear together, almost like a compound verb as in english _take a walk. _In the case of beeing a regular adverb, I should think that "weit" is just a complement of "spannte" and can be used individually because the verb works as an identity itself, shouldn't I?

Thank you!


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## Gernot Back

alberto29 said:


> I wanted to know if "weit ausspannen" is a unity of meaning in the sense that the possible dependence of "weit" on "spannte" is so big that theses two words should always appear together, almost like a compound verb as in english _take a walk._


No I would not think of *_weitausspannen_ as a particle verb. _*Aus*spannen_ in itself is already a separable particle verb. To my knowledge, a verb stem can only have *one* separable particle, with which it forms the sentence bracket in its finite forms. If a German verb apparently has two separable particles they immediately merge into one particle, as in the case of 

_her_ + _ab_ -> _herab_

_her*ab*fallen: Im Herbst fallen die Blätter von den Bäumen herab._​


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## Mravinszky

Hi alberto

This depends very much on the concrete musical setting... 

Keep in mind that already in the poem there is an *enjambement*. So it clearly tolerates _some_ (slight) division. Then it's crucial how you lead melody and harmony... What is your style in general... 

Look at Schumann:

He has a one-bar rest between "spannte" and "weit", being the longest rest in a phrase of the song up to then. Yet the harmony leads further (from double dominant to Zwischendominante and then chromatic). This way he achieves tension preparing the "weit". Although the melody goes down on "spannte", thereby creating the risk for the singer not to hold this tension, which he might even not be perceive – as it is in the piano part. If the melody went up this would be easier for the singer...

But let aside performers' imperfections, I think, Schumann is a perfect example for treating this place. Keep it somehow floating, hovering in mid-air...


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## alberto29

Thanks for your quick responses!
Mravinszky, I have a very precise idea of what I want to write here, but since I'm not a german native speaker I want to assure myself that everything I put on the paper is coherent with german language and with the poem.

And yes, Schumann's setting is a masterpiece =)


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## samloyd

To me it is a case of a predicative adjective. It describes the state of the wings after the act of spreading, not at all the way in which  spreading takes place. I really do not see an adverb here. (I tried hard, not hardly...)


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## Gernot Back

samloyd said:


> I really do not see an adverb here. (I tried hard, not hardly...)


But _hard_ in this English sentence *is* an adverb, even though it is not marked with a "_-ly_" suffix"
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/flat-adverbs-are-flat-out-useful/


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## samloyd

Gernot Back said:


> But _hard_ in this English sentence *is* an adverb, even though it is not marked with a "_-ly_" suffix"
> http://www.dailywritingtips.com/flat-adverbs-are-flat-out-useful/



That is exactly what I wanted to say with my example: You cannot always expect -ly at the end of an adverb  (in my example you would even invert the significance with -ly). Sorry if I created confusion with the word "here" which of course did not refer to this example (in brackets) but to part of the foregoing discussion.


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## Mravinszky

I agree (coming back to pure linguistics...), "weit" is a predicative adjective, the tie to the verb not being tenser than to the object. In terms of diction, "(meine Seele) spannte weit ihre Flügel aus" is one phrase which should not lose coherence, no matter where you might place a small pause.


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## berndf

Dan2 said:


> So, right, the absence of -ly doesn't necessarily indicate that "wide" is an adjective.  But the following must be accounted for.  (I use "*" to indicate unacceptability.)
> 1. The bird spread its wings wide/*widely.
> 2a. The revolutionaries spread their message *wide/widely.
> 2b. The disease spread *wide/widely.


Different meanings of the adverbs? Like in "he worked hard" vs. "he worked hardly", to take up the example in #18.

EDIT: The different meanings would be:
_spread wide = an object is unfolded
spread widely = objects are scattered_


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## berndf

Mravinszky said:


> I agree (coming back to pure linguistics...), "weit" is a predicative adjective, the tie to the verb not being tenser than to the object. In terms of diction, "(meine Seele) spannte weit ihre Flügel aus" is one phrase which should not lose coherence, no matter where you might place a small pause.


That is not a valid test. The sentence "Er kam nicht vorwärts" is also "one phrase which should not lose coherence", yet "vorwärts" is undoubtedly an adverb.


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## berndf

samloyd said:


> It describes the state of the wings after the act of spreading


Not really. _Und meine Seele spannte weit ihre Flügel aus_ describes an action not a state. This is fundamentally different from sentences like _Er malte die Tür rot an_. Here _rot_ is property of _Tür_ achieved through the action and is not part of the action.

The state achieved through the action _die Flügel weit ausspannen_ it not _*die Flügel sind weit_ but _die Flügel sind weit geöffnet_, i.e. _weit_ is not a property of _Flügel_ but of_ geöffnet_, i.e. it is an adverb.

The distinction between predicative adjectives and adverbs is sometimes difficult in a language with uninflected predicate adjectives and unmarked adjective-derived adverbs like German, to some degree maybe even irrelevant, I am not sure. It might help, if we compare this to a language which does inflect predicative adjectives. In the French translation, the passage reads: _Et mon âme ouvrit tout grand ses ailes_. If _tout grand_ described a state of _âme_ it would have to be _*toute grande_; if it described a state of _ailes_ it would have to be _*toutes grandes. _The form _tout grand _is the correct one for a modifier of _ouvrit_.


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## Mravinszky

berndf said:


> That is not a valid test. The sentence "Er kam nicht vorwärts" is also "one phrase which should not lose coherence", yet "vorwärts" is undoubtedly an adverb.



Sorry for the misunderstanding. I didn't intend a causal nexus between my two sentences. Should have made two paragraphs out of it:

The first would have been about the grammatical structure.

The second paragraph, quite another cup of tea, referring to diction, meaning musical phrasing of language, as this was Alberto's main concern.


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## samloyd

berndf said:


> The distinction between predicative adjectives and adverbs is sometimes  difficult in a language with uninflected predicate adjectives and  unmarked adjective-derived adverbs like German, to some degree maybe  even irrelevant, I am not sure. It might help, if we compare this to a  language which does inflect predicative adjectives. In the French translation, the passage reads: _Et mon âme ouvrit tout grand ses ailes_. If _tout grand_ described a state of _âme_ it would have to be _*toute grande_; if it described a state of _ailes_ it would have to be _*toutes grandes. _The form _tout grand _is the correct one for a modifier of _ouvrit_.



It may even be an advantage that  the distinction between predicative adjectives and adverbs is sometimes  difficult in our language. In the present case, there seem to be  components of both so that a clear attribuition might even destroy some  quality here. A translation into another language adds an interesting  aspect but cannot be a really convincing argument: Unlike German, French  needs a unique formal decision (for grammar reasons) - which, however,  does not mean that it gives a correct explanation of the original text.  And of course, adding a verb like "geöffnet" changes the text in a way  which eliminates the problem. 

We can even consider a plain  example from everyday German: "Der Bogen wurde weit gespannt." I see  part of your point: "weit" needs some reference to a verb, it can't just  refer to "Bogen" which would have to be the case for a "clean"  predicative adjective. But still it is not like "Der Bogen wurde schnell  gespannt." - "schnell" being clearly an adverb. It is this necessary  reference to a noun ("Bogen") which in my opinion prevents a unique and  crystal-clear categorization as an adverb. I'd still see it more like a  predicative adjective. I'd rather not follow the decision made in some  (albeit interesting) translation into a foreign language. I agree,  however, that your remarks show a categorization is not as clear as I  previously thought.


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## Mravinszky

All this reminds me of trying to define Chinese word classes. Maybe we are simply reaching beyond the limits of traditional Latin-based learners' grammar...


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## berndf

samloyd said:


> It may even be an advantage that  the distinction between predicative adjectives and adverbs is sometimes  difficult in our language. In the present case, there seem to be  components of both so that a clear attribuition might even destroy some  quality here.


In general I agree that leaving the categorization open is sometimes the most sensible interpretation. But in this case I think it is unambiguous: If it were a predicative adjective than the corresponding attributive form, _weite Flügel_, had to be meaningful in the same sense as well and not only _weit geöffnete Flügel_.


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