What part of speech is better in the following sentence? Is it an adverb because it modifies the verb expect? Is it an abstract noun because it is an “intangible concept such as an emotion, a feeling, a quality, or an idea”. Or is it a comparative adjective?
We expect better from our royal family on whom we spend millions and millions of pounds for training and schooling.
I'm teaching English in Japan and I am a Japanese. When we read the following material in an article (2009) by The Guardian: Politicians condemn Prince Harry over 'racist' remark
One of my students asked me about the above sentence. He asked me what part of speech is better in that sentence: Noun? Adjective? Or adverb? – I'm also wondering.
And also, I would like to ask the following, is it possible to reposition better in the following?
We expect our royal family better, on whom we spend millions and millions of pounds for training and schooling?
or
We expect better things from our royal family on whom we spend millions and millions of pounds for training and schooling.?
Best Answer
It sounds like an adjective with an elided noun (e.g. better behaviour, better responses), but in the given context ODO treats it as a noun.
The following is a sketch why I'm equivocating.
The intention appears to be that the author was disappointed with some aspect of the royal family's behaviour, expecting it (the behaviour) to be better.
Had the expression been "expect better behaviour", there would be no question that better serves as an adjective, modifying behaviour:
Eliding "behaviour" from the phrase reduces the noun phrase "better behaviour" to the single word "better". The sense still carries, though, which is perhaps why it is categorised as a noun in that context. Linguists have expressed that ellipsis is held as something of a last resort, so I'll just leave this as a plausibility argument, rather than a definitive one. Nevertheless, this seems to be a layman's description of BillJ's more articulate comment:
In comments to this answer, it was suggested that "better" could be an adverb, comparing the royal family to other families. I find this a little hard to justify syntactically from your original quote. The quote doesn't even hint at a comparison with other families; it's a statement that talks exclusively about one family. Now, it's possible to argue that better modifies expect, but that changes the natural sense of the quote.
Regarding the rephrasings: splicing the noun phrase into "expect better" doesn't produce an idiomatic expression, and "better things" doesn't quite capture the original sense related to behaviour; it might work if the original related to circumstances or situations.