Herb,

Either of the two solutions you suggest are still hamstrung by the fact that in either of those cases "for" requires a noun object and thus the comparative phrase in the example is striking.  For example you cannot say, "John worked for as short as he could" or "for as happilly as he could."  If what you say is correct, those should be equally allowed.  

Phil Bralich

-----Original Message-----
>From: "Stahlke, Herbert F.W." <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Feb 23, 2006 12:19 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: "work for" plus adverb clause
>
>Kathleen,
>
>I think this is a case where the language allows alternative
>complementation to "work".  The "for" here may be by analogy either to
>the benefactive "for", as in "He worked for his sister", or to the
>durational "for" as in "he talked for two hours."  But the verb "work"
>allows either a bare time adverb, like "he worked two hours" or the
>temporal prepositional phrase "he worked for two hours."  You don't have
>to call it an idiom.  They're simply alternative structures.
>
>Herb
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Kathleen M. Ward
>Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2006 2:54 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: "work for" plus adverb clause
>
>One of my students asked me what to do with the following sentence:
>
>	He worked for as long as he could.
>
>Now, "as long as he could" is, I think pretty clearly an adverbial 
>phrase, containing in itself a comparative clause with deletions.  The 
>question is, what do you do with the "for"?  I understand that it can 
>be omitted--and then the analysis is easier.  But I would not want to 
>say that an adverbial phrase can be a complement/object of a 
>preposition.  Is "for" a preposition here?  Is it a particle? Do I just 
>throw up my hands and call it an idiom?
>
>How do other people see this?
>
>Kathleen Ward
>UC Davis
>
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