Is 'take' a linking verb?

[羡鱼-Xianyu]

Father has taken restless of late.

Dear all,
As we know, 'take' is not a linking verb. In the sentence above, however, 'take' takes an adjective 'restless'. Is this sentence correct? Thanks.

Xianyu

 

[Raymott]

Father has taken restless of late.

Dear all,
As we know, 'take' is not a linking verb. In the sentence above, however, 'take' takes an adjective 'restless'. Is this sentence correct? Thanks.

Xianyu

This sounds like a strange sentence to me.
However, "He has taken ill" is common, so the point is valid regardless. Maybe others can think of other examples where they'd use "take" this way.

 

[羡鱼-Xianyu]

This sounds like a strange sentence to me.
However, "He has taken ill" is common, so the point is valid regardless. Maybe others can think of other examples where they'd use "take" this way.

Thank you very much, Raymott!
Can I think the 'ill' in your sentence to be a noun, instead of an adjective?
Ok, but at least I now know my sentence sounds strange to a native speaker's ears.;-)

 

[Tdol]

It's an adjective to me rather than a noun. The only thing that was strange was the collocation of take/restless, which is not one I would use as a BrE speaker.

 

[Raymott]

Thank you very much, Raymott!
Can I think the 'ill' in your sentence to be a noun, instead of an adjective?
Ok, but at least I now know my sentence sounds strange to a native speaker's ears.;-)

No, "ill" is an adjective. That's why 'take' is a valid linking verb in this case, but this might be the only common use for it as such.

 

[BobK]

No, "ill" is an adjective. That's why 'take' is a valid linking verb in this case, but this might be the only common use for it as such.

:up: I have a feeling that the exception may be due to a change over time in the word class of 'ill'. In 'ill-remembered'*, for example, its function is adverbial. And many dialects use 'poorly' instead of 'ill'; even then, 'poorly' has the function of an adjective - a Yorkshireman speaking dialect would say 'Art [tha] poorly?', to mean 'Are you ill?' But the ending suggests there was something adverbial about it once.

*Possibly a little archaic now, but that's the way I am;-). Today an older(?) person may say 'I well remember the time when...', or even - in a more mannered variant - 'Well I recall...'. But - for the opposite case - we'd say 'I remember only vaguely/mistily/imperfectly' (possibly, with a subconscious and even unrecognized hat-tip to St Paul, 'as through a glass, darkly' ;-)). In that case, it was possible until the early twentieth century to say 'I ill remember'. That adverb is recalled in the compound adjective 'ill-remembered'.

b