Ron, I think your ESL pedagogy is sound. We really don't disagree on that or on what makes for useful and effective practice, and what doesn't. I'm not sure I see what you're getting at, though, with your contrast of "look after" and "look at". From the perspective of grammatical analysis I'd call them both (mono)transitive prepositional verbs, capture the fact that the preposition has become lexically bound to the verb. Consider, for example, how "look at" has become "lookit" in informal speech. But ESL students don't need this level of differentiation and can do quite well considering "look" intransitive and the prepositional phrase adverbial. Different goals. Herb Well, that's all very well, Herb, but it doesn't really answer my question which was 'If you consider 'look after' as a monotransitive prepositional verb, what do you consider 'look at' to be, and if you differentiate them how do you do so in an ESL class? In my view, again in an ESL class, one should consider neither to be transitive, sticking to the assumption that the following nouns are objects of the prepositions. Again, as I think we understand, we are concerned here with pedagogical clarity and not accurate sophisticated linguistic analysis. As to the old chestnut of grammatical drills, I do not know what you understand them to be, Herb. but my understanding of them entails the repetition of forms without having to think about them. As such, I would not have them within ten miles of my classroom. All controlled practice should require some form of reflection on an underlying rule even though it might be instantaneous. As an example of identifying phrasal verbs and particle movement after a period of instruction, I would organise a class for pair work in the following way. Each pair is named A and B. B receives a sheet on which there are listed examples of sentences which contain a variety of sentences some of which contain both transitive phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs. The sheet also contains the answers so that B can act as 'teacher'. The instructions are as follows: Listen to the example. If you think there is a phasal verb in the sentence, move the particle appropriately and say the modified sentence. If you think that the verb is a prepositional verb, simply say so. B reads an example such as The man put on his hat. Students answers: The man put his hat on. B says 'Correct'. If A says, Prepositional verb, B tries to get him to think about his answer and correct it. I developed this technique many years ago and have used it very frequently with all levels. I have found that the students like it and quickly develop their own teachniques to prompt their fellow students into changing their incorrect answers for correct ones. Further, this to me underlies what I condier to be an important principle of successful pair work. That is that one of the pair needs to be able to provide the correct answer. Ron Sheen ----- Original Message ----- From: "STAHLKE, HERBERT F" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2007 7:47 PM Subject: Re: Those old transitivity blues was Help for a puzzled teacher Ron, Let's start with easiest of your questions, how to use information like this in teaching. The fact is that I wouldn't present a seven-fold classification of anything grammatical in an ESL context. I might be forced to do something like that if I were teaching Chinese nominal classifiers, of which there are dozens, or Bantu noun classes, which can exceed a couple dozen, but fortunately English doesn't do such things. What's important in developing both fluency and register control in non-native speakers is that they learn to shift particles when doing so is pragmatically motivated, that they learn to use a passive when that structure is pragmatically motivated. And this they will learn much better from usage and practice than from grammar drill. I think perhaps you confused Bill and me in the latter part of your post. Actually, the classification I posted is from Sidney Greenbaum's Oxford English Grammar (OUP, 1996), so I can't take credit for it. Transitivity does have degrees. Intransitives take only a subject, (mono)transitives take a subject and a direct object, and ditransitives (SG's "doubly transitives") take a direct object and an indirect object, which may or may not require a preposition. Indirect object, bear in mind, is a function, not a structure, and it can show up as either a bare NP or as the object of a preposition. I suspect SG uses "monotransitivity" in a excess of clarity, the result of which isn't necessarily what the writer hopes for. Actually, SG doesn't distinguish between "look at" and "look after". In his discussion of prepositional verbs (p. 282), he uses "look at" as an example of a monotransitive prepositional verb. Back to the question of goals for a moment. SG was writing a reference grammar, and so his goal was to provide as complete and thorough a classification of English structures as he could. Hence his seven classes of phrasal/prepositional verbs. What the ESL teacher does with this classification is subject to different, pedagogical goals, and I hope that teacher would keep SG's treatment well away from his students, while being informed by it as he or she prepares lesson plans. Herb One of the great advantages of this List (and particularly if one has the intellectual courage to state what one knows about grammar with the attendant possibility of being proven to be wrong and the even worse possibility of realising that one has been teaching something to students which is possibly incorrect) is the potential it has to make one re-examine one's own assumptions about some point of grammar. Herb's comments on the complexities of phrasal verbs and Bill's list of three examples are cases in point. This query, then, is just to clarify things in their posts and particularly in the context of ESL. Bill's list of three is as follows: I looked [up the chimney] prepositional phrase I [looked up] the word phrasal verb I looked [up] adverbial particle. Just to avoid ambiguity, I would modify the second two as follows: I [looked up] the word. As 'up' is an adverbial particle and as 'the word' is the direct object of the resultant phrasal verb, 'look up' is a transitive phrasal verb. I looked [up]. As 'up' is an adverbial particle and as there is no direct object, 'look up' is an intransitive phrasal verb. Would Bill agree with this modification? Herb's list of seven really puts the cat amonst the pigeons of my assumptions about transitivity. Here's Bill's list: 1. intransitive phrasal verbs, e.g. "give in" (surrender) 2. transitive phrasal verbs, e.g. "find" something "out" (discover) 3. monotransitive prepositional verbs, e.g. "look after" (take care of) 4. doubly transitive prepositional verbs, e.g. "blame" something "on" someone 5. copular prepositional verbs, e.g. "serve as" 6. monotransitive phrasal-prepositional verbs, e.g. "look up to" (respect) 7. doubly transitive phrasal-prepositional verbs, e.g. "put" something "down to" (attribute to) My problem is with 3 This is the first time that I have encountered the term 'monotransitive' so perhaps Bill can explain the significance of the addition of 'mono-'. In the case of 3, why is Bill implicitly differentiating 'look at' and 'look after'? I ask this because I am assuming that he is not claiming that 'look at' is a monotransitive prepositional verb. In the case of ESL, I think it preferable to consider them both intransitive in order not to muddy the transitive waters too much. 6 & 7 are also problematic in ESL terms for the same reason but perhaps we can come to those later. Ron Sheen To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/ To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/ To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/ To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/