Patty,

    I always feel the same about teaching grammar as I do about poetry. 
We get to slow things down. Love is at the heart of it. If you pass that 
on, they learn for a lifetime.

Craig

Patricia Lafayllve wrote:
> 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
>   
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