At 12:55 PM 10/19/97 +0000, Carolyn Kirkpatrick wrote:
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>Sender:       Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>              <[log in to unmask]>
>Poster:       Carolyn Kirkpatrick <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject:      Of phrasal verbs and sentence patterns
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>This example came up in the context of a grammar course for
>English majors.  My students (most of whom have little prior
>experience with grammatical analysis) are struggling to understand
>two interrelated matters, phrasal verbs, e.g.,
>
>        We looked up the address
>           ~~~~~~~~~
>
>and adjectival subject complements, e.g.,
>
>        You look pretty.
>
>We are told that some of these complements can be prepositional
>phrases:, e.g.:
>
>        You look like hell.
>
>But then we are presented with this example:
>
>        Ryan looks like his older brother.
>
>We are told to analyze this example, too, as
>subject / verb / adjectival phrase.
>
>It doesn't "feel" the same to my students nor, I must confess, to
>me.  While "like hell" can be paraphrased as "awful," we cannot
>think of a suitable paraphrase for "like his older brother."
>
>*We* think "looks like" here is one of those phrasal verbs.
>Certainly Ryan (NP1) and his older brother (NP2) are two different
>people.  And you could say
>
>        Ryan resembles his older brother.
>             ~~~~~~~~~
>Why isn't this a subject / verb / direct object pattern?
>
>One cannot make "resemble" passive, to be sure:
>
>        *His older brother is resembled by Ryan.
>
>I do remember somewhere being told that "resemble" is
>problematic -- but I don't remember the details.  We would appreciate
>comments and and guidance to a fuller explanation of these matters.
>Can you suggest any tests that would help us better understand the
>example?
>
>Thanks!
>
>Carolyn Kirkpatrick
>York College/CUNY
 
Dear Carolyn:
 
Good questions!  Tricky verbs.
 
You and your students are right, of course, that "like hell" and "like his
older brother" feel different.  And, yes, "looks like" and "resembles" have
the same meaning.  So I think you could make the case that this is a
two-word verb.  [Whether or not we can call it transitive is another
issue--so in terms of fitting into the traditional verb categories, it's
tricky.   It depends on what we consider the defining criterion for
"transitivity":  Can it be turned into passive?  Does it require a  direct
object (i.e., a complement with a referent different from its subject)?
(Or both?)  Maybe we need to add a new category to the traditional
transitive-intransitive-linking.  (As I said, that's another issue.)]
 
But to make the opposite case,  phrasal verbs like "turn on" and "put up
with" and "look into" are generally idioms, cases where the meaning of the
combination is more than, or different from, the combined meaning of its
parts.  In other words, "turn on" is not the meaning of "turn" plus the
meaning of "on" in the conventional meanings of those two words.  But in
"She looks like me," the two-word combination of "looks like" combines the
meaning of "look" and "like,"  so we wouldn't call it an idiom.   On the
other hand, who's to say that a two-word verb is always an idiom?  Why make
that a criterion, just because it's a common feature.  (So now I'm arguing
the other side again!)
 
Now lets look at some other linking sense verbs like "look."  How about
"This coffee tastes like water"?   Is "tastes like" in the same category as
"looks like" (his brother) ?   How about "This sweater feels like silk"?
Well, we don't have synonyms for "tastes like" and "feels like"  as we do
for "looks like" (although we could, in a pinch, use "resemble" again).  Is
that a criterion?  It can be a two-word verb only if there's a one-word
synonym.
 
In those sentences, we could make the "linking" case because we could also
say "This coffee tastes weak" or "This sweater feels silky."  That gets us
back to your original question.  These two "feel" like "Ryan looks like
hell."  Right?
 
Let's look at another "looks like" case.  How about "Ryan looks like a nice
guy."  Well, that's comparable to "Ryan looks nice."   So we could make a
case for that "looks like" as a linking verb.  Right?   (We probably
wouldn't say "Ryan resembles a nice guy."  But how about, "Ryan looks like
a nice guy that I used to go out with."   Maybe here "resembles" fits.)
 
I think what this boils down to is that "looks like" has two meanings.  In
"the brother" sentence it means resemble.  In the "nice guy" sentence it
more like "seems" (and, in fact, the British do say, "Ryan seems a nice
guy").  So I think your students are right to question that sentence
pattern.
 
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?
 
Isn't this language of ours wonderful!
 
Martha Kolln