Janet,
    I wish I could make these decisions easier. I always have a little problem with "what we should be required to know", since language is a rich and interesting subject with great rewards that don't stop coming once you have passed a sort of minimal certification. But like you, I have to live in the real world and students rightly are worried about what they need to know for the test.
   It's interesting that the Longman grammar (Biber et. al.) uses the category "recipient adverbials" to sort of finesse this problem.  "I'll just write the check for you" is one of their examples, and it could easily be paraphrased, as they point out,  as "I'll just write you the check." I'm not convinced it's best described as adverbial, since it's simply another way to make clear the receiver role while manipulating the structure of the message. To me, it's less a problem of formal rules and more a question about how meaning is built, thinking of meaning as representational, interactive, and textual. The "you" continues to be the receiver. The preposition mostly makes it easy to manipulate the order for message purposes.
   I also like the perspective that grammar builds bottom up, not top down. These are functional patterns.
   I would have an initial problem with "boy named Joe" as retained object, since it almost implies a source sentence that wouldn't be likely in the context.  "His parents named him Joe. I met him in September." I think "named Joe" or "called Joe" have probably floated free of those structures. It's usually easy to edit them down to appositional phrases. "I met a boy, Joe, in September."
   Don't past participles somewhat maintain a sense of the passive in these clauses? "We pushed the boy into the closet." "The boy pushed into the closet..." I think the notion that those relationships are retained is very useful, regardless of how we classify them.
   "For me to criticize him would be foolish" is an interesting sentence. I will mull it over. It occurs to me that constructions like that are often juxtaposed.  "It would be foolish for me to criticize him."
   We have a functional need to talk about processes as the focus of expressions. It might not be foolish in general to criticize him, but just foolish "for me." Maybe I don't have the background or expertise. From that sort of functional push, it makes sense.

Craig
  


Castilleja, Janet wrote:
[log in to unmask]" type="cite"> 
Yeah - I meant 'me.'  What I was really trying to get at is whether or
not people ever call 'for me' in 'Joe baked a cake for me' an indirect
object,  since it seems to be doing the same thing as 'me' in 'Joe baked
me
a cake.' I had learned that prepositional phrases can't be major
sentence elements like subjects and objects, but that seems to be
substantially more complex.

'For me to criticize him would be foolish.'   Here 'for me' seems to be
the subject of the infinitive clause.  I know that 'for' constructions
introduce some non-finite structures, but can we still call them
prepositions?  

I also wondered whether people use the term 'retained object
complement.'  I like it, but I think my students feel it goes way beyond
what anyone should be required to know.

My state, Washington has teacher tests.  We use Praxis by ETS. Students
are required to take a basic skills test, which we require students to
take before entering our teacher ed program.  Then, if they get an
endorsement such as ESOL or bilingual education, they have to take a
test for that. These are the tests that my students are preparing for,
and the test really asks them questions about grammar.

Examples:
My sister and I always loved sledding down the hill
behind our house.

The underlined word in the sentence above is an
example of

(A) a conjunction

(B) a participle

(C) a gerund

(D) an adverb

We went to a restaurant, and dinner was cook very bad.

The underlined words in the sentence are an example of an error in

(A)	question formation

(B)	relative clause formation

(C)	passive formation

(D)	command formation

Now I'm careful to use words like 'gerund,' which I didn't used to use,
because I know they see it on the test.

Janet

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From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
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