Bruce,
    I have been reading Sperber and Wilson (early stages) and can't help
applying some of that to what you are saying. But let me know if I'm
off. They seem to say that every statement requires interpretation and
that we look for the simplest explanation we can find. (By extension,
the most effective communication gives us the most while requiring the
least effort. It's a nice working rule for writing instruction and
editing. Make it accessible. Bring it into focus.)
   One way to think about a "rule" is as a constraint. But form also
enables. (I suspect you would agree.) So it's not so much a matter of
bending a rule as it is a matter of using the resources of language
effectively in a unique situation. Language has to grow and change
because our world is constantly changing. But you're right; there has
to be some stability in the system. The cognitivists talk about
frequency quite a bit. The more frequent something is, the more likely
it is to be used again, and that in turn increases frequency. Even
three and four word sequences are processed much more readily when they
occur together often.
   It's not unusual for a productive construction to expand in use. One
example is the "way" construction, which started as something like "He
cut his way through the dense foliage" and gradually expanded to
include things like "She slept her way to stardom" or "He whistled his
way through the graveyard" or "She smiled her way through customs."
It's not so much a bending as it is an expansion. Without the initial
construction, though, the expansion can't happen. This is true of words
as well. "Class clown" expanded the meaning of clown. Wittgenstein
famously makes this point with the word "game," which has expanded to
the point where some meanings seem to have nothing in common with each
other.
    I don't think systemic functional linguistics starts with overly
simple communications and interactions. They see very rich meanings
built into the language at the level of the clause: language helps us
represent the world (including the internal world of our thoughts and
feelings), helps us interact with other people, and helps us weave
those functions together in the construction of text. They would claim
that language itself has evolved along those lines. It is what it is
because of what it does.
    I suspect this may be too theoretical for many on the list. I hope not.
>
Craig

 Craig,
>
> The divisive part was simply saying that students and investigators have
> one of two goals that are at odds.  I think both things happen in
> language.  The interpreter attempts to fit the words into a known pattern.
>  If that fails at a reasonable understanding, then the other patterns that
> the words suggest are tried, with the bending of the other words until
> something reasonable with the least bending comes out. The idea is that
> both processes are needed.  Sometimes our creations challenge the
> sensibilities of others by using unrecognized patterns that have been
> bent.  Sometimes they do so because they use words in different ways or
> different words than we are used to.  Our goal ought to be the discovery
> of the rules of either kind that are being bent.
>
> I believe that there are rules, but that each person finds them to be
> differently constructed according to their own mental constructs.  I
> believe that successful communication requires that there be a degree of
> commonality to the rules we use.  Each word seems to bring with it a set
> of patterns it can be found in (constructions).  Each situation seems to
> suggest a set of words that fit parts of what is going on in the world
> (semantic nets).  The structuralists have begun with the simplest of
> patterns.  This can be frustrating.  The systemic functionalists have
> begun with the simplest kinds of communication and interactions.  This can
> also be frustrating.  Most linguistic schools have some valuable insights
> about the whole process.  Maybe someday they will be able to meet
> somewhere in the middle.
>
> Bruce
>
> --- [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> From: Craig Hancock <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Object complement (richness of language)
> Date:         Wed, 12 Jan 2011 11:17:23 -0500
>
> Bruce,
>     This is a conversation I routinely have with my own students. I
> didn't
> mean it to be divisive and polarizing. I welcome the reference to our
> current political situation. We have a responsibility as educators to
> cultivate the right kind of civility in a country that seems deeply in
> need of it. I don't mind being being corrected if I cross a border. I
> have probably done that a few times in the past and hope not to do
> that again, though I also believe we need to cultivate an atmosphere
> where nonmainstream views are welcomed to the list. You and I have
> disagreed quite often, but I have almost always benefited from the
> chance to see things from your side.
>     What I found at the LSA conference is that there are not many people
> working in applying linguistics to L1 instruction. Most of those are
> interested in dialects, not in syntax, probably because there is such
> strong resistance to syntax in NCTE. At the same time, there is
> confusion and concern about why English teachers teach so little about
> language. We are a rare group, believe me. My own talk was enormously
> well received, which makes me believe there is so much value in
> conversation between these worlds and an interest in doing so. There
> is much to be gained by collaboration. ATEG, as dysfunctional as it
> may be at times, is at least an attempt at that. I have always
> advocated for a big tent ATEG and will continue to do so, even with
> the occasional flare up of anger.
>     I once believed that there were underlying "rules" in the language
> (not just prescriptive rules)that governed the production of language.
> I once believed that words are simply placed into pre-existing slots.
> On the functionalist side, this is sometimes called a "rules and
> words" approach. It assumes a separation between syntax and
> vocabulary. From that perspective, our primary task is to describe
> which of the underlying rule governed patterns a sentence falls into.
> I think Martha Kolln (Whom I have great affection and respect for)
> takes that approach in Understanding English Grammar. It's the basic
> approach of American Structural Grammar. C. C. Fries, for example, who
> has been a large influence on Martha, presented the grammar as a
> "structural meaning", the lexicon then adding to that. (For the
> moment, we can leave the generative approach to the side. I think it
> goes even further in that direction.) When I teach grammar from this
> perspective, students often feel high levels of frustration when
> sentences don't fit neatly into these patterns and words or word
> groups don't fit neatly into their slots. If our primary goal is
> classifying sentences into these categories, sentences at the
> boundaries can seem like a troubling problem.
>     In my own classes, I find it helps to shift the focus to another
> possibility, that these are not so much rules as patterns. From
> another perspective, there is no split between syntax and vocabulary.
> These can be seen as simply poles in a cline, with the vocabulary
> being simply the most delicate form of the grammar. (That's Halliday's
> view of it, but also the view in construction grammar and cognitive
> grammar.) Some patterns are so highly productive that they come almost
> to seem like abstract rules, but it is nevertheless possible to see
> them emergent, arising from use and sustained by use. When we deal
> with transitivity, some verbs will be far more central to the
> category. "Give," for example, is very much a prototypical
> di-transitive verb, perhaps the best example of the category. The
> direct object is sometimes called a "transferred entity" in this
> category, and that usually works for "give" but not nearly as well for
> "present" or "offer," especially if the presentation was murky or
> ignored or the offer is not welcome. Speech act verbs (like "telling")
> seem to form a sub-category. And then we have "sending" and "showing"
> and "teaching" and "building" (for a beneficiary), which each have
> verbs somewhat like them, and it's clear that some members of the
> category sometimes seem like each other, but more peripheral to the
> overall class. I have found with my own students that this seems a
> less frustrating (and richer) way to explore transitivity.
>    You are absolutely right; no matter what view you take, you can't
> ignore patterns and forms. a functional grammar does not and cannot
> dispense with form; it simply deals with it in a different way.
>     In biology, the view of life as a "complex adaptive system" is pretty
> much uncontested. In language, you are right; it can be thought of as
> divisive because it differs from more mainstream views in central
> ways. It is not intended to be divisive, but intended to be offered as
> an alternative way to understand the complex living world of language.
>
> Craig
>
>
>  I love to see Craig broaden the analysis, but am mildly troubled by the
>> statement:
>>
>> "If our primary goal is to classify, this is problematic. If our
>> primary  goal  is  to respect the richness of language, this is
>> reassuring."
>>
>> I believe the challenge is to do both.  Like so much political debate
>> this kind of talk can be divisive and polarizing.  The classification
>> of
>> verbs
>> (just like that of nouns, adjectives, etc.) involves both sub-classes
>> and cross-classes based on both distribution and denotation.  Both
>> kinds of classes and both kinds of criteria (syntactic, semantic)
>> are regularly taken into account.  These are the sources of the
>> richness.  Through analogy and metaphor the language we use allows us
>> to create new meanings with old constructions and new constructions
>> for old meanings.
>>
>> Bruce
>> --- [log in to unmask] wrote:
>> From: Craig Hancock <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Object complement
>> Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2011 12:56:00 -0500
>> TJ,
>>     Recent grammars expand the notion of "object complement" (though
>> they may not use the term) to include adverbials. "We leaned the
>> ladder against the shed." Your be verb analysis would work for those:
>> "The ladder is against the shed."
>>    We also have sentences like "He left us dying with laughter." The
>> be test works for this one also. "We were dying with laughter."
>>    The problem with the be test for infinitives is probably its
>> difficulty  in  combining  with an infinitive. "The coast guard
>> permitted fishing vessels to trawl." "The fishing vessels were to
>> trawl" is awkward, whereas "were trawling" would work.
>>    All of this suggests that the boundary of the category gets fuzzy
>> for concepts like allowing and permitting. The prototypes for these
>> constructions (most central) are causative. The direct object is
>> changed in some way. (He made me captain. He made me happy. He made
>> me laugh.) Allowing and permitting allow for some volition on the
>> part of the object. (Just because we were allowed to trawl doesn't
>> mean we actually did it.)
>>    When we roughly classify verbs and their complements into a small
>> number of types, a few will fit very centrally and some will seem
>> marginal.
>>    Another problem case would be verbs of imagining and finding and
>> discovering. (I found myself trawling. I discovered myself trawling.
>> I imagined myself trawling)
>>    If our primary goal is to classify, this is problematic. If our
>> primary  goal  is  to respect the richness of language, this is
>> reassuring.
>> Craig
>> On 1/11/2011 11:19 AM, Benton, Steve wrote:
>>
>> TJ,
>>
>>
>>   I believe this example, “They allowed the vessels to trawl,”
>> is
>>   similar to an example I offered last week,
>>
>>   “Make me smile.”
>>
>>
>>   In response to my earlier inquiry, some (Bruce Despain and Martha
>>   Kolln) suggested that Reed and Kellogg would put “smile” in
>> the
>>   “object complement” slot.
>>
>>   Bruce wrote:  “1) ‘Make me smile.’
>>
>>   R&K place ‘x’ for "to" (like a preposition) and
>> ‘smile’ the rest
>> of
>>   the simple infinitive on stilts. The stilts project upward from the
>>   object complement line, so that ‘me’ is still the direct
>> object.”
>>
>>
>>   Others (Beth Young, citing Cecil Adams’s analysis of “See
>> Spot
>>   run”) suggested that “me smile” is an “objective
>> infinitive”
>> and
>>   the object of the transitive verb “see.”
>>
>>   http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1275/how-do-you-diagram-th
>>   e-sentence-see-spot-run
>>
>>
>>   Would we analyze the first sentence differently if the transitive
>>   verb was “made” instead of “allowed,” and thus
>> removed
>>   “to,” the “sign of the infinitive” (“They
>> made the vessels
>> trawl”;
>>   “The vessels are made to trawl”)?
>>
>>
>>   It seems to me that “me smile” is a unit just as
>> “vessels to
>>   trawl” is a unit (as opposed to “smile” being a
>> complement of
>>   “me” and “to trawl” being a complement of
>> “vessels”).
>>
>>
>>   Steve
>>
>>   East Central University
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> From:   Assembly   for   the   Teaching   of   English  Grammar
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of T. J. Ray
>> Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2011 8:21 AM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Predicate adjective?
>>
>>
>> The suggestion that the infinitive in the fishing boat example in
>> this thread is an objective complement.
>>
>> Evidently a new thread as to the definition of objective complement
>> may be needed.  I have taught and
>>
>> thought that an objective complement is found when "to be" may be
>> inserted between the direct object
>>
>> and the adjective or nominal following it.
>>
>>           John found the fish inedible.  John found the fish to be
>> inedible.
>>
>>           The coach made Billy the starting quarterback.  The coach
>> made Billy to be the starting quarterback.
>>
>> When  such sentences are made passive, the objective complement
>> remains to the right of the verb.  The
>>
>> subject  of  the  original  sentence  becomes the object of the
>> preposition "by."
>>
>>           The fish was found to be inedible by John.
>>
>>           Billy was made the starting quarterback by the coach.
>>
>> This thread might also suggest the transitive verbs that may be
>> followed by objective complements.
>>
>>
>> At any rate, if these notions about objective complement hold true,
>> it seems clear that those sentences
>>
>> with an infinitive phrase in the predicate are not capable of being
>> preceded by "to be":
>>
>>            "Fishing vessels are now allowed to trawl within the
>> previously restricted zone" likely began its
>>
>> life as "Wildlife managers (or game wardens or some other authority)
>> all fishing vessels to trawl in
>>
>> the  previously  restricted  zone."   That  second,  underlying
>> active-voice original cannot have "to be" inserted
>>
>> between "vessels" and "to trawl."
>>
>>
>> tj
>>
>>
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