Bill,
   It's interesting that the three kinds of complements that show up with
"be verbs" (essentially noun phrase, adjective phrase, and adverbials
of place and time) also show up in the "object complement" slot. In the
causative construction, we learn how they (the object entity) came to
be that way. In the copular construction, we simply learn what they
are, are like, or where located. (Identity, characteristics, location
in space or time.)>
   "The lecture is after lunch." "The lecture was scheduled after lunch."
(Potentially ambigious out of context, but assuming the scheduling
happened before lunch and it's the lecture itself that is after lunch
precisely becasue we acted in such a way as to put it there.)_
   We can imagine a spacial parallel in "the dinner is on the table."
   I like to think of the representational process as having elements that
don't always show up in the discourse. "Kick" is a transitive verb, but
we can say "he kicked with all his might." In context, the object is
understood or even unimportant to the purposes of the speaker. We don't
always need to articulate all the relevant elements.
   Of course, it's difficult to think of "across the river from Troy" as
caused construct in a sentence like "Albany is across the river from
Troy." We have to imagine something like "Settlers established Albany
across the river from Troy", but I don't think that's conveyed in the
shorter version. There's a stability there. "The stars are in the sky.
God is in the heavens."  I don't think we always imagine some sort of
causation with these structures.
   I have no idea if I'm addressing your interests. Depending on the
class, I may or may not follow it out in this much detail.

Craig


Hi All --
>
> I'm in the phase of my grammar class that involves dealing with clause
> patterns. I give my students a list of the basics, and then (of course)
> start fielding questions about exceptions. One issue that I know has
> come up on this list, albeit a while ago now, is how to treat the kind
> of prepositional phrase that's a required component of sentences such
> as, "The meeting is at 5:00." I seem to remember some of the list
> members being not too upset at the notion of treating it as a kind of
> subject complement (with the proviso, of course, that I may just be
> remembering what I want to). Traditionally, prepositional phrases have
> not been considered arguments of the verb, and subject complements are
> arguments, so there's a principled position against this kind of
> treatment -- but if we relax the prohibition against PPs as arguments,
> it seems to work fine.
>
> What kind of approaches are there to dealing with the required
> prepositional phrase after 'put'? Is it too far off to consider it an
> object complement? This may have come up in the earlier discussion about
> linking expressions, but if so, I don't have old enough messages
> archived to search through (in other words, sorry if I'm beating a
> long-dead horse!).
>
> Canonical object complements have the same relation to the direct object
> that subject complements have to the subject --they're identifying, or
> attributive:
>
> 	We elected Brunnhild president.	/	Brunnhild is president.
> 	We consider Brunnhild competent.	/	Brunnhild is
> competent.
>
> Based on this, I've started informally calling object complement
> constructions "translinking patterns," to try to highlight their
> similarities to the linking-verb constructions. Trying this with "put"
> seems to produce a parallel result:
>
> 	We put the book on the table.		/	The book is on
> the table.
>
> Of course, to some extent, trying to treat everything as falling into
> one of a few basic patterns is simply an exercise in abstraction; I
> don't want to maneuver me or my students into thinking that we're
> approaching "reality" this way. However, it does seem to work as an
> organizational device.
>
> Bill Spruiell
>
> Dept. of English
> Central Michigan University
>
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