Speaking of punctuation:

"we called John, the boss."

The comma renders "the boss" an appositive rather than an object  
complement. Interesting case of punctuation affecting syntactic parsing.

If the attended meaning is "we used the appellation 'the boss' to  
categorize John", no comma is allowed.

Dr. Johanna Rubba, Ph. D.
Associate Professor, Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Dept.
Cal Poly State University San Luis Obispo
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Ofc. tel. : 805-756-2184
Dept. tel.: 805-756-2596
Dept. fax: 805-756-6374
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/