Prager: "It's complex to explain why you would use an adjective instead of an adverb..."

Prager is the guy who used to say, "Men and women are born differently." Apparently someone told him what was wrong with it because he quit using the adverb there. But I guess the explanation was "complicated". Obviously he's never read any of my emails because I know I've sent him a few on this subject. Does he really think grammar is important if his email reader won't forward even a short letter on grammar to the boss?

If he thinks it's "complex" it's no wonder that he still uses adverbs where the noun complement is, which he occasionally does, and occasionally doesn't. Today's comment that it's "complex" tells me he still doesn't thoroughly understand it, especially in light of how he inappropriately used an adverb just a few days ago.

For those of you who give a crap about grammar and are wondering what's the reason, it's simple: the verb "to be" is a "linking" verb, more correctly called a "copulative" verb. It connects the subject of the sentence with a word that describes or modifies it, and so we get the subject in the nominative case, and the word describing the subjec also in the nominative case.

I am blue.
He is tall.
That is my sister.

In each of these the last word modifies the first word. Blue is what I am, and tall is what he is, and my sister is what she is.

That's because of the copulative verb that connects the S and the PN.

There are twenty or thirty common verbs that act as copulative verbs. "Seem" and "look" are the most obvious examples. "You seem smart", "you look pretty". Smart and pretty restate what "you" look and seem to be.

I would have a difficult time listing all such verbs. How about "became"? "I read a lot more after college and BECAME a lot smarter." Well, here's a start:

Englis copulae

OBVIOUSLY "smarter" restates what "I" am. But there are a great number of elementary school grammar texts out there that would have you believe that whatever comes after the verb (when the verb is not "is") describes the verb and must be an adverb. And so we get such foolishness as Prager's old mistake, "Men and women are born differently," because he thought he was describing HOW we are born. We are born how? differently.

Sorry but the answer to that question is that we are different at birgh. You grow angry, you become angry, you wax angry. I wish I had a dollar for every time some nitwit editor has put out a book, article, thesis, column, whatever, that said "he waxed angrily."

Kill me, please.