Are you married?
(Essential Grammar in Use)They may say the tense of the example is present simple. But it is semantically ‘present passive.’ Is this a usage of present simple in English? If yes, would you let me have some more examples?
Answer
It often happens that participles become so widely used as adjectives that they lose their verbal sense in contexts which do not require a verbal reading.
Past, for instance,was originally the past participle of pass, but it was ‘deverbalized’ so long ago that it has had a distinct spelling for three hundred years. Interesting, interested, boring, bored are all pretty much independent adjectives; note, for instance, that except in very formal registers you rarely read of anyone interested by something or interesting himself in something.
Married is just such a deverbalized adjective: when you ask someone Are you married? you are inquiring about their current state, not the ceremony which established it. If you wanted to ask about that you would have to use a specifically verbal construction, something like Have you gotten married?
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Listenever , Answer Author : StoneyB on hiatus
