The End Is Here

"The end is here."

could just as easily read...

"Here is the end."

One of the criteria of a predicate noun is that you can replace the subject with the predicate noun and it still makes sense. But, what are the other criteria? Here cannot take an article, like most nouns, so there is one strike against it already.

In the sentence“here is the end” one could argue that “here” is an expletive, not the subject, (like “there is the end”—you would diagram it with "there" above “the end | is”). The focus, when “be” is followed by an adverb, like now, here or soon is the existence of the end, much like I am using it here: It is inevitable that the end will be, it’s just a matter of when it will be. Here, I will concede that "is" could be an intransitive verb modified by an adverb.

However, this is not the same focus in a sentence like: The girl is in the kitchen. The question being answered is not whether or not she exists.

Here is what I woke up thinking about:

I painted the chair in the corner – If “in the corner” is adverbial, then it means that I sat in the corner and painted the chair. If it is adjectival, then it means that I painted the chair that is in the corner.

In the relative clause – that is in the corner – there is no question in my mind about what “in the corner” modifies, it is telling which chair by telling where the chair is. If you diagrammed it, you would make a dotted line from “that” to “chair”. If you replaced the pronoun with its antecedent, you would have: The chair is in the corner. (I have a math brain—it would be nice if I could plug in numbers to prove my point).

Like math, in grammar, it does not matter if you have 2 apples or 2 oranges it's still 2. Semantics do not determine grammatical function—meaning it is not fair to say “She is in the kitchen” really means “she is doing something in the kitchen” therefore “in the kitchen” is adverbial.

Think about common mistakes people make with linking verbs: I felt badly about the situation. They want to use the adverbial form of “bad” because it tells how they felt. (I am thinking of the time Donald Trump scathed Cyndi Lauper on national television for saying “I feel bad”. He argued that it should be “badly” and he is highly educated.)

{I am leaving the rest of my post here because I am blogging to document my learning process. But since I do not want to lead anyone astray with my former ignorance, here is a link to more accurate information: http://livefullyawake.blogspot.com/2011/11/when-just-because-is-not-satisfactory.html}

Why do we ask “How are you?” but have to answer with “what are you?”

Why would we let words that describe how I feel, look or seem be adjectives, but not words that tell where or when something IS? And why when there is a choice, why do we choose an adjective every time? Or if there is an adjectival equivalent, we can substitute it?

South Dakota and Montana are beside each other – They are adjacent or adjacently?

New York is in the north – New York is northern.