Re: Prepositional Phrases as Subject Complements
Cynthia and Nancy,

In my chapter on Sentence Patterns in "Understanding English Grammar," I discuss the particle in sections entitled Intransitive Phrasal Verbs and Transitive Phrasal Verbs.  The concept of the particle is not mentioned in the traditional school grammar books on my shelf--the one's I learned from.  One of the examples I use is from House and Harmon's "Descriptive English Grammar":

        He came by his fortune in an unusual way.

H&H call "came" an intransitive verb, followed by two adverbial prepositional phrases.   That makes no sense, of course!  "To come by" means "to acquire."  This is clearly a transitive verb, with "his fortune" as the direct object.

Here are two examples of intransitive phrasal verbs: pull through, turn in:
       
        We hope Senator Kennedy pulls through.
        We turned in at midnight.

In both cases, a one-word substitute is available: survives, retired.

The phrasal verb is a concept where the traditional diagram does its job so well--in making the meaning clear.

Martha




Cynthia,
 
I always put the particle on the line with the verb. I thought that when a word that us usually a preposition functions as a particle, then we don't have a prepositional phrase at all (because we don't really have a preposition). I will be interested to see if I've been teaching this idea correctly or not, but I teach my students that a verb phrase that includes a particle would mean something entirely different without the particle and that a one-word verb can usually replace the verb phrase.
For example, "to turn off" is an entirely different action than "to turn," and "to turn off" can be replaced by "to extinguish."
 
Once we have applied those tests and determined that we have a particle, I no longer call it a preposition. The word that would have been the object of the preposition is now the direct object.
 
Eagerly awaiting the others' feedback . . .
 
Nancy
 
Nancy L. Tuten, PhD
Professor of English
Director of the Writing-across-the-Curriculum Program
Columbia College
Columbia, South Carolina
[log in to unmask]
803-786-3706
 
 
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Cynthia Baird
Sent: Sunday, May 25, 2008 10:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Prepositional Phrases as Subject Complements
 
This might be a little off topic, but Bill's response brought to mind something that I have always struggled with.
 
In traditional high school sentence diagramming, how does one diagram a prepositional phrase following verbs like "put" or "turn" which are always followed with what I was taught are verb particles.  For example, Turn up/off the radio. or Turn off the lights. or She put on her clothes.  I don't see the prepositional phrase as being truly adverbial, but that's always how high school textbooks diagram them.  Is there a way to diagram a verb particle?  Can the particle be part of the verb followed by a direct object (radio, clothes, etc.)?
 
thanks!

--- On Mon, 5/19/08, Spruiell, William C <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Spruiell, William C <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Prepositional Phrases as Subject Complements
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Monday, May 19, 2008, 11:12 AM
The traditional approach of ruling out prepositional phrases as subject complements is partly, I think, a relic of the "word-based" focus of pretty much all grammar up until the twentieth century. That is, an actual "object" or "complement" had to be a word - and in older systems a "substantive." That category could include nouns and adjectives, so adjectival subject complements were no problem. With prepositional phrases, though, the nominal part was considered to be the object of the preposition, and it could not simultaneously be the object of a preposition *and* the complement of a verb. Saying that the PP as a whole is the complement, rather than the NP inside it, solves the problem nicely, but the traditional system never quite made it that far with subject complements, although it did with (for example) acknowledging noun clauses as direct objects.
 
I can't see much of an argument other than tradition for ruling out PPs as SCs. Yes, there are semantic limitations on them, but that's true of regular SCs as well. It's difficult to set up a situation in which "My cat is tangential" or "The chief of staff is the twelfth century" work very well. Locational PPs work well primarily as SCs toŠ.well, locations. Acknowledging PPs as complements also lets you deal more systematically with the verb "put," since otherwise you're stuck explaining why that "adverbial PP" is not only mandatory, but hard to move.
 
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
 
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Martha Kolln
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 4:43 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Prepositional Phrases as Subject Complements
 
I certainly agree, Dick, that these adverbials have limitations.  Time adverbials are limited, I suspect, to events.
 
Martha
 
 
Martha,
 
We probably should make a distinction between time/place adverbials that are complementary (describing the subject) and those that are non-complementary (purely adverbial, describing the predicate). For example, in your sentence "The car is here now,"  "here" is complementary but "now" is not. We can say "The car is here," but we can't say "The car is now."
 
Likewise the sentence "Emma was at the beach after final exams" allow us to say "Emma was at the beach," but it doesn't allow us to say "Emma was after final exams." "At the beach" is an adverbial that complements the subject (answers "Where was Emma?). "After final exams" is a non-complementary adverbial (answers "When was Emma at the beach?" rather than "When was Emma?").
 
Dick
________________________________
Richard Veit
Department of English
University of North Carolina Wilmington
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Martha Kolln
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 2:58 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Prepositional Phrases as Subject Complements
 
Hi Patty,
 
In traditional grammar, be is classified as a linking verb. That  system leaves out sentences like Peter's second one, "Deb was in her car,"  where what follows be is an adverbial.
 
This is a pattern that , in my grammar book, I identify as "NP be  ADV/TP"--where be is followed by an adverbial of time or place, rather than by a subject complement.  Such adverbials are often prepositional phrases.  Here are some other examples:
 
      
        Deb was there.
 
      
        The car is here now.
 
      
        The party will be tomorrow.
 
      
        The election was on Tuesday.
 
 
These "completers" of the predicate don't describe or rename the subject, as Peter's first example does. "Cornelia was in a bad mood" is another way of saying "Cornelia was cranky."  I suppose you could call the adverbial completers complements, but they aren't subject complements as adjectivals and nominals are.
 
And note too that the adverbials that complete be sentences are limited to time or place; adverbials of manner, for example, don't work here.  It's not that we can't say "Deb was quickly"--it's just that we don't.
 
Martha
 
 
 
 
 
 
Sincere question, here:

Would it be OK/accurate to say that, in the first sentence, "in a bad mood"
is a prepositional phrase functioning adjectivally, where in the second
sentence, "in her car" is more of an adverbial function?

Tell the truth, I'm not sure how to classify "location" as a subject
complement.

My thinking is: how would I explain this to students, who might not have had
the exposure to this grammar list?

-patty

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter Adams
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 11:56 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Prepositional Phrases as Subject Complements

How would you categorize the prep phrase, "in a bad mood," in a 
sentence like the following?

Cornelia was in a bad mood.

How about the prep phrase "in her car" in the following sentence?

Deb was in her car.



Peter Adams

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