Geoff, I bet Craig agrees with you in many ways since his own grammar text
is meaning-focused.

Since we have so many grammatical perspectives represented within ATEG, it
is often fun to see how different schools of thought handle the same
construction. I doubt Craig would call himself a traditional grammarian, but
he was curious about how traditional, pedagogical grammar might treat his
cited example. Since I tend to be more of a structuralist, I am often
curious about cognitive perspectives, which Craig and others often supply.

John

On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 4:08 PM, Geoffrey Layton <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

>  Craig - I know we've had this discussion before, but my reaction is "what
> difference does it make what we call it?"  I don't see how you can have
> anything except flexible boundaries, which then leads to the more
> interesting question of the rhetorical effect of "shading" into a verb -
> what happens to the meaning of the sentence? Labeling the choices as
> preopositions, adjectives or verbs really doesn't go very far to answer this
> question.
>
> Geoff Layton
>
> > Craig,
> >
> > My first reaction was that this use of "like" was adjectival, but since
> you want a traditional treatment I checked the OED Online and Merriam
> Webster Dictionary Online. Both treat as an adjective, although MW doesn't
> have an example with BE.
> >
> > Herb
>
> > I am curious about how traditional grammar handles "like" in a sentence
> like "One of these things is not like the others." (I know; Sesame Street).
> > My instinct is to say "like the others" is prepositional phrase,
> complement to "is", therefore referring back (adjectivally?) to "One of
> these things." Would that be standard?
> > If it can be easily replaced by "resembles" (or "doesn't resemble"), does
> that mean "be like" is shading into a verb like status with "the others" as
> object? Are we OK with flexible boundaries around our categories?
> >
> > Craig
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