Dick,
    I think it would be very much parallel to "beat the crap out of me." My first inclination is to see it as complex transitive. "I sent that man from my door." "I drove that problem out of my mind."  The second complement is adverbial. The direct object (affected participant) ends up in another place as a result of the action of the verb.  If I remember right, though, more traditional grammars don't recognize the larger category of adverbial compliment in complex transitive sentences. It seems so obvious to me.
    *"Out of me, this bugs the hell."  *"This bugs the hell." These sorts of tests aren't foolproof, but they do seem to confirm that "out of me" is complement, not just modifier.  It's a required element in the construction.

Craig

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Dick Veit
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 8:17 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Parsing requested

In a post yesterday, I used the verb phrase "bugs the hell out of me." Can we try to parse that? Is "the hell" a direct object? An adverbial? Or is it just an unanalyzable idiom--after all, it doesn't analyze semantically.

Dick
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