Karl,

 

I didn't comment on the relation of the whole NP to the matrix sentence.  "The way...used to" has an adverbial role modifying "looks".  The most obvious demonstration of this is that it answers the question "How does he look?"  "The way he used to."

 

Herb



	

	 



	Ditto on the NP analysis, but what's notable to my mind is that "look" 

	doesn't typically take an NP predicate complement in American 

	English--it's almost always an adjective phrase (look happy, etc.) or a 

	PP. The only other structurally equivalent examples I can come up with 

	are "look your age" and "look yourself" (as in "you don't look yourself 

	today"), both idiomatic expressions. Other examples with NP's have a 

	distinctly British ring to my ear (as in, "I must look a total fool"), 

	and would almost certainly have 'like' in American usage. 



	Karl Hagen 

	Department of English 

	Mount St. Mary's College 



	Stahlke, Herbert F.W. wrote: 



	>I would treat "way" as the head of the noun phrase and "he used to" as a 

	>reduced relative clause.  It's an asyndetic relative, that is, there is 

	>no relative pronoun or subordinating conjunction "that". 

	> 

	>Herb 

	> 

	> 

	>Subject: Explaining "A WAY" 

	> 

	>Fellow Linguists and Other Fond Folks, 

	> 

	>Look at the following sentences: 

	> 

	>                                           1. He looks like he used to. 

	>                                           2. He looks the way he used 

	>to. 

	> 

	>How would you label the phrase "the way" in sentence 2? Is it a 

	>subordinator? It seems to function that way, much as "like" does in the 

	>first sentence. 

	> 

	>Your turn. 

	> 

	>Marshall Myers 

	> 

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