How would you analyze this:  Once upon a time, there was a prince named Joe.

 

Do you analyze a prince named Joe as a noun phrase with a participle phrase modifying the noun head, or as a participle clause?  I’ve always called these non-finite constructions reduced clauses or participle clauses, but I have run into a problem.  In my grammar class for pre-service teachers, I start with noun phrases.  When I teach noun modification, I want to teach students about post-modification, but they really don’t know anything about finite and non-finite verbs yet, nor do they know much about clauses.  So this semester, I decided I would just call them participle phrases which modify nouns.  But then I was in trouble when we got to clauses because I wanted to call then reduced or non-finite clauses.  By that time, the students knew enough to say “Hey wait a minute!  Didn’t you just tell us those were phrases?”  At least I know they were listening in October.

 

Also, do you call ‘Joe’ a retained object complement, or is there a better way to label this?

 

How about this:  Joe baked a cake for me.  Can I just go ahead and call ‘Joe’ an indirect object? It means exactly the same this as Joe baked me a cake.

 

This is an on-going problem for me, because, even though I try to teach them a pretty straight forward descriptive-structural-functional view of syntax (Quirk et al is my bible), with a little discussion of prescriptivism thrown in so they’ll know what to expect when they get into the schools, I find that frequently there is more than one way to analyze a given structure.  This disturbs my students.  They want to know the ‘right’ way, and it better be the way that it is gong to show up on the subject area test they have to take.  Do you think there is any consensus on the ‘best’ grammar approach to teach pre-service teachers?  This is not a trivial issue, since they have high-stakes tests (for themselves and their students) principals and parents in their futures.

 

Comments?

 

Janet Castilleja