Is "remains" in "Xenophobia remains in our society" a linking or intransitive verb?

Yet another grammar question.

I know that 'remains' can be a linking verb in many contexts, but I'm undecided on whether it is linking in the sentence "Xenophobia remains in our society".

I feel that "in our society" doesn't restate or rename xenophobia, and I feel it answers the question "Where does xenophobia remain?", making "in our society" an adverb of place. But certainly you can describe some societies as xenophobic.

So what characterization is appropriate in this case?

Solution 1:

Good question. A sentence like this shows how imperfect the distinction between a regular verb and a linking verb (copula) is: there are arguments for calling it either in your example.

On the one hand, you could say that "xenophobia remains here" is much like "xenophobia is bad", which is clearly a copula plus subject complement: the last word is a property that is assigned to the subject.

However, the somewhat artificial convention defining copulae says that an adverbial phrase is normally not considered a subject complement: only nominal phrases (basically adjectives, pronouns, and nouns) can be subject complements. For that reason, one would normally say remains is not a copula in your example, but an ordinary intransitive verb.

Solution 2:

As I understand it, a linking verb connects the subject to a noun that redefines it OR to an adjective that describes it. In this case, "in our society" does not "rename" xenophobia, but it does describe it.

For example, "Bob is the chairman." "Bob" and "the chairman" are two ways of identifying the same person, so "is" is a linking verb here.

"Bob is hungry." "Hungry" is not another name for "Bob", but it is an adjective that describes Bob. "is" serves as a linking verb.

An interesting rule of thumb I just stumbled across is, Try replacing the verb that you think may be a linking verb with "is". Does the sentence still make sense and convey a similar idea? If so, it probably is a linking verb.

"Bob feels hungry." Replace "feels" with "is": "Bob is hungry." Yes, it's still basically the same idea. "Feels" is working as a linking verb.

"Bob feels a pain in his foot." Replace "feels" with "is": "Bob is a pain in his foot." No, that doesn't make sense, definately not the same idea. "Feels" is not working as a linking verb.

In this case, "Xenophobia IS in our society." Yes, that makes perfect sense and is a similar idea. "Remains" is working as a linking verb.

Solution 3:

You seem to be agonising over a categorisation that may be a bit pointless in the first place.

In your dichotomy between "intransitive" vs "linking" verbs: (a) what grammatical phenomena are inherent to each of these categories? (b) what grammatical tests are there to decide on the categorisation in a given instance? If your categorisation is too woolly to have answers to (a) and (b), I wonder how useful it is...?

The categorisation of verbs according to "transitivity" is quite a complex issue. As an example of the kind of complexity at stake, I'd recommend e.g. Legendre & Sorace, "Auxiliaries and Intransitivity in French and in Romance" in Godard (ed), "Fundamental Issues in the Romance Languages". They're obviously concerned mainly with Romance languages rather than English, but the underlying issues potentially apply beyond the Romance languages.