For Max and Michael:

Consider "I leaned the shovel against the wall" (something, unfortunately,
that I did again this morning, after our most recent snow storm).  The
sentence becomes ungrammatical without the prepositional phrase.  Indeed,
it is hard not to think off that phrase as being a complement--an adverbial
of place complement.  It completes the meaning of the sentence, even though
it already has a direct object.

Is that analysis too simple?

JVB

 At 11:50 PM 3/9/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Mostly I sit back and listen and watch the conversations on this listserve.
>Lately, I've enjoyed the scope and sequence thread.  It's been thoughtful
>and enlightening.  Because of the snow emergency today, I've stayed home to
>work and just opened my e-mail, to find a conversation on adverbs and
>complements.  Interesting again.  Adverbs are tough to define, tougher to
>teach.  I can't remember now who said it, but one of the old linguists said
>that all grammars "leak" at adverbs.  The reference was to the fact that no
>matter how tight a grammatical system you build, the system won't be able
>to contain the adverbs.  L.M. Meyers, in his history of the English
>language text, said, tongue in cheek, that when you're analyzing a sentence
>and you come to a constituent you can't identify, it's an adverb.  Tough
>things these adverbs.
>
>One reason that functional grammars are so daunting is that the roles nouns
>play in sentences--agent, patient, receiver, etc., are all adverbial roles.
>When we put the subject of a transitive verb into a "by" phrase, we call
>that prepositional phrase an adverb of agency.  When we move the noun
>phrase from the indirect object position, we put it in a prepositional
>phrase with "to" or "for." The prep phrase functions as an adverb, a
>perceptive receiver (dative).
>
>In case grammar, Fillmore identified underlying roles--just as functional
>grammarians do.  He posited a role-based deep structure which had only
>verbs and nouns (in case-marked prepositional phrases).  These roles are
>marked in inflectionally structured languages as cases.  In languages like
>English, they either sit in subject or direct object positions, or they sit
>in prepositional phrases.  In essence, these roles are adverbial.  So
>perhaps Plato was right, that there are but two "parts of speech"--onema
>and rhema, nouns and verbs (I don't think I spelled onema correctly).  But
>if Plato was right (following Fillmore and the functional grammarians, and
>contemporary binding and filtering theory) then he should have said that
>the two parts of speech are really verbs and adverbs (adverbials?), nouns
>in adverbial roles.
>
>So, yes, I would analyze "next week," or "Thursday,"  or lots of other noun
>phrases as nouns functioning like adverbs (adverbials?).
>
>The question of whether they're complements.  Hmm!  A lot of old grammar
>books call all noun phrases following verbs complements.  Certainly there
>are verbs like "put" that MUST have a prepositional phrase to complete them.
>
>We put the jars in the cabinet.
>We stuck the poster on the wall.
>
>I don't bring such verbs up in my book, but I would consider the
>prepositional phrases (adverbs) to be complements.  I guess they
>complement the verb.  And there probably are prep phrases that complement
>other subclasses of verbs.  My mind is getting a bit fuzzy now.  It's after
>11:30 p.m.
>
>At any rate, I was hoping to bring two threads together in order to make
>each a bit more clear.  I hope I succeeded.   And I hope the discussions
>remain lively and thoughtful.    Good luck, Max
>
>Max Morenberg, Professor
>English Department
>Miami University
>Oxford, OH 45056
>
>Ph: 513-529-2520
>e-mail: [log in to unmask]
>
James Vanden Bosch              (616) 957-6592
Department of English           [log in to unmask]
Calvin College                  fax: (616) 957-8508
Grand Rapids, MI 49546          http://www.calvin.edu/~vand
for PureVoice software:         http://www.eudora.com/epro/purevoice.html