Bill,
    Put me down as P3, VP0, but I don't teach K-12. It seems to me that sentence modifiers weren't thought of as sentence modifiers when I first learned grammar way back when. If it modifies the whole sentence, it doesn't make consistent sense to call it part of the predicate unless you somehow think of it as modifying the finite (the predicating element.) I guess SFL would say it's the "mood element" (both grammatical subject and finite) that are modified.

Craig
________________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Spruiell, William C [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, October 08, 2012 2:53 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Unofficial current practice survey-ish question [persnickety]

Hi all:

Since I tend to read over a fair number of grammar texts, I've encountered a number of positions on the exact meanings of the terms "predicate" and "Verb Phrase" (VP); some texts exclusively use one or the other, while a few use both and distinguish the two in various ways. It struck me the other day that I'm not sure how much variation there is in K-12 and college non-linguistics-classes practice, though, so I figured I'd just ask the list.

I'm plugging in an example sentence below, with two lists of "definitional position statements" after it (it's awkward, but I wanted to plug a lot of elements in because some of the variations in definitions involve which parts get excluded). If you're kind enough to respond, please don't feel restricted to only the positions I've listed — I'm just trying to guess what the most common ones would be. And if the taxonomy is a headache, just ignore it. It doesn't take into account some of the terminological innovations of modern approaches to syntax, but I'm assuming few, if any k-12 curricula are using those. I compulsively try to create taxonomies, and it's almost irresistible in this kind of situation.  And apologies if this has been done on ATEG before; I remember similar discussions coming up, but I didn't find a close equivalent in a fast search of the Archives, although that could be the fault of my search terms.

Sentence:  Surprisingly, the remaining aardvarks had, for some reason, quickly eaten most of the burritos by the time I arrived.

Positions (Mix and match )

On Predicate:

P0: Predicate not used as label.
P1: Predicate = everything but subject (so includes everything in example except for "the remaining aardvarks").
P2: Predicate = everything but subject and initial sentence modifiers (so excludes both "surprisingly" and "the remaining aardvarks").
P3: Predicate = everything but subject and all sentence modifiers (so excludes "surprisingly", "the remaining aardvarks", and "for some reason").
P4: Predicate = [logic-based version of P3] Everything except subject that would matter in out-of-context truth-conditional logic.
P5: Predicate = verb, together with its auxiliaries and direct adverbs, plus its complements; excludes subject and sentence modifiers, as well as Adjuncts like "by the time I arrived".

On VP:

V0: VP not used as label.
VP1 – VP5: Identical to P1 – P5, except using "VP" instead of "Predicate".
VP6: VP = verb together with its auxiliaries (so "had eaten" in the sentence above).
VP7: VP = verb together with its auxiliaries, adverbs, and complements.



Examples: If I'm using a system that uses both "predicate" and "VP", and defines the first as "everything but the subject" and the second as "the verb plus its auxiliaries and direct adverbs", I'd call it a P1/VP7. If instead, I'm using a system that just uses "Predicate," but excludes sentence modifiers from the predicate, I'd call it a P2/VP0.

--- Bill Spruiell

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