Hi Craig-

Thanks for the response.

I find all these nuances hard to express, myself, sometimes.  This in its
turn helps me think of my students - if I can't find the words to express
the nuances, how will they ever understand the nuances themselves?  So
"conversations" like this are great for me to have, or even just to read
about.

I already freely admit to being a "total word-nerd" so that they understand
where I'm coming from, too.  In a world where many students are still
learning "a noun is a person, place, or thing" I think letting them know
that I love variation shows them more about language than a book will.

-patty

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 2:41 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Prepositional Phrases as Subject Complements

Patty,
   Location is a very typical complement of the verb to be. "Albany is 
across the river." "The lecture is after lunch." (In the second, the 
location is in time.)
   "In a bad mood" is, as has been nicely pointed out, metaphoric. It's 
interesting that we conceive of it, at least syntactically, as if the 
person were contained within the mood. The meaning seems more 
descriptive, but the metaphor is spatial, so it seems half adverbial, 
half adjectival. So many of our core metaphors come from our 
sensory-motor experience of the world: "I place her above me. She was 
beside herself with grief. That was out of this world."
   In explaining it to students, my goal would be to revel in the 
nuances of meaning and admire the creativity at the heart of language.

Craig
  
s web site at http://ateg.org/

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