Scott, 
    If "out of me" modifies "hell," then I would expect that "hell out of me" could become the subject in a passive version. "Hell out of me is bugged by it." That doesn't work. You have to say "Hell is bugged out of me by it," which is awkward, for sure, especially with the sentence ending pronoun, but seems closer to the sense of the original. 
   In traditional grammar, I think the term "object complement" is used for these kinds of structures ("drove me crazy"), but traditional grammar, if my memory is correct, doesn't recognize adverbials in that slot. Other grammars do. "She drove me up the wall." I see "up the wall" as adverbial complement (not a modifier). I think "out of me" fits that pattern as well.
   
Craig 
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Scott Catledge
Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 10:11 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Bad English and parsing ATEG Digest - 19 Sep 2011 to 20 Sep 2011 (#2011-178)

"Bugs the hell out of me" is easily diagrammed "Reed-Kellog" showing hell as the DO and "out of me" as a prepositional phrase modifying hell.

If any readers attempted to diagram the sentence beginning "Due to," they would quickly see that "had to" is not the error that Trask was indicating.

I do find it inexcusable that participants in an elist for English grammar would try to obfuscate the issue by waving the ethno-racial flag in defense of incorrect grammar. 
It has been long
accepted that foreigners can and often do excel in their speech and writing. 
Note that one of the
most respected English grammarians was Jespersen and that GB Shaw wrote "Her English is so perfect, which clearly indicates that she is foreign.  For foreign people are instructed in the English language while the English people are'n."  I just returned from an international congress in Barcelona.
The presentations in English by non-English participants were equal to or surpassed those by English speakers in most cases.  Almost every participant was a professor in some field or another--only three, to my knowledge, held professorships in onomastics--the subject of the congress.

Scott
 

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