I am a first year linguistics student with English as my major and I'm somewhat stuck on a question in an assignment. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Q. What does the word 'living' in the following sentence function as? Give a reason for your answer
"A living language is never static"
It's a VERB, the present participle of the verb "live". It looks like an adjective, but you can't modify it with very, so that rules that out, and it obviously can't be a prep or adverb.
Incidentally, adjective, preposition etc. are word categories; functions are subject, complement, object etc.
In your example, "living" is functioning as a 'pre head modifier' of the noun 'language'
living : adjective
alive: "living creatures" | : "flowers were for the living."
• [ attrib. ] (of a place) used for living rather than working in: the living quarters of the pub.
• (of a language) still spoken and used. " a living language"
• [ attrib. ] literary (of water) perennially flowing: streams of living water
LONGMAN'S DICTIONARY:
liv‧ing : adjective
1 alive now [≠ dead]:
He's one of the greatest living composers.
The sun affects all living things (=people, animals, and plants).
1. They can be modified by degree adverbs like "very" (A very entertaining show), but you can't say *A very living composer.
2. They can occur as complement to complex-intransitive verbs like "become", (It became quite entertaining) but you can't say *The language became quite living.
3. They can occur as complement to complex-transitive verbs like "find" (I found it quite entertaining), but you can’t say *I found it quite living.
Other examples of verbs pre-modifying nouns are:
A sleeping child. An approaching train. Some melting marshmallows.
Which is why some present participles like “living", "sleeping", "approaching" and "melting" are best categorised as VPs when they are pre-modifying nouns.