Q:

Discrepancy in using adjective or adverb with “taste”

One asks “how does x taste,” implying that they’d like an adverb describing the way it tastes. But one answers with an adjective, “it tastes good” instead of “it tastes well,” which would imply that x is tasting something else. What’s the reason for this discrepancy?

A:

Is it good? Or do you feel sick?
It’s pretty easy to think of other verbs like this, so there’s no discrepancy. These are linking verbs and the adjective is the subject compliment.

A subject complement is the adjective, noun, or pronoun that follows a linking verb.
The following verbs are true linking verbs: any form of the verb be [am, is, are, was, were, has been, are being, might have been, etc.], become, and seem. These true linking verbs are always linking verbs.
Then you have a list of verbs that can be linking or action: appear, feel, grow, look, prove, remain, smell, sound, taste, and turn. If you can substitute any of the verbs on this second list with an equal sign [=] and the sentence still makes sense, the verb is almost always linking.
Grammar Bytes — The Subject Complement: Recognize a subject complement when you see one.

