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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