Martha and Johanna:
 
My students and I appreciate your detailed replies to our recent
query about sentence analysis -- I printed your answers out for my
class (longing for the day when all of the academic world will be
connected by e-mail).  I am delighted that they have this opportunity
to experience language and grammatical analysis as living subjects.
Thank you!
 
Martha, you wrote:
 
> Now, let me give your students another one that troubles me:  "Daylilies
> grow wild in our backyard." What's the function of "wild"?  Adverbial,
> telling "how"?  Or subjective complement?
 
We are very sure that "wild" here is adverbial.  Not at all like
"I become wild when you present me with all these 'tests'"!
(Actually, we are very grateful in particular for the various
helpful tests the two of you supplied.)
 
Johanna, this was a typo, right?
 
> We looked up the flue. -- verb + PP
> We looked up it.
> *We looked it up.
>
> Also, try moving the PP to the front of the sentence:
> *Up the address we looked. Doesn't work for phrasal verbs.
> Up the flue we looked. Doesn't work for non-phrasal verbs.
                         ~~~~~~~
                          Does?
 
The trouble with native-speaker intuitions:  After a few minutes,
*everything* seems ungrammatical . . . or worse, grammatical!
 
And yes, do please post a few references, if that wouldn't be too
much trouble:
 
> If anyone is interested in technical reading sources on these topics, I
> can supply some titles.
 
With thanks again,
 
Carolyn Kirkpatrick
York College/CUNY