Bill,
    What is useful about complement is that you can almost make it verb
specific. "What kind of meaning often comes with "worry."" We have a
worrier and some thing to be worried about. We can also "worry that."
And how about "You are going to worry yourself sick," which would be a
complex transitive pattern that feels very natural to me. "You are
going to worry your poor mother to death."
    When you ask what "worry" means, it makes sense to include its
grammatical range, which is not at all closed in by its past meanings.
New uses can expand its possibilities.

Craig>

 Herb et al.:
>
>
> Some on this list have, in the past, suggested avoiding the whole "direct
> object" mess altogether by simply saying English verbs are associated with
> one to two complements (keeping the Subject separate for the moment) and
> that complements can come in different types, thus avoiding the whole
> object/indirect object/object complement etc. mess entirely,  (I don't
> have my stored list archive on this comp., so can't search).
>
> That approach strikes me as not only useful for K-12, but as not  being
> really an oversimplification. After all, since there's variation in the
> behavior of NPs in what are traditionally called object positions,"NP as
> direct object" is a simplification as well. Any set of labels can be
> argued to be a well-accepted set of lies to some extent. And there's wide
> (possibly total, but we're a fractious bunch) support among linguists for
> the claim that a complement/adjunct distinction is fundamentally useful,
> even if we disagree about specific problem cases around the fringe. There
> are ample analogies that can be used to convey the basic idea for this in
> the early grades. How old does a kid have to be before s/he makes a
> distinction between the things that automatically come with if you order a
> Happy Meal, and the things that you order on the side?
>
>
>
> Bill Spruiell
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of STAHLKE,
> HERBERT F
> Sent: Fri 3/12/2010 1:23 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: a query
>
> <<portion deleted for brevity>>
>
> Brett and Huddleston&Pullum are right that content clauses are distinct
> from NPs in a number of ways.  However, that's a pretty sophisticated
> statement, and one that I've tried to teach to undergraduates in a grammar
> class without much success.  I think part of the problem is that the
> issues involved are not relevant to the questions that teacher prep
> students are prepared to ask.  Whether S and NP are alike is a serious
> linguistic question but probably not one to be addressed outside of
> linguistic contexts.  The problem reminds of a line Jerry Saddock wrote in
> a review of Ronald Langacker's introductory text _Language and its
> Structure_.  He was lamenting the difficulty of presenting linguistic
> concepts to students who haven't yet gained the linguistic sophistication
> to handle them.  What he wrote was, as I can only paraphrase it forty
> years later:  It's unfortunate the linguists don't have a well-accepted
> set of lies to teach introductory students, like f=ma in physics, until
> they know enough to understand why the lies were necessary.
>
> Herb
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Edmond Wright
> Sent: Friday, March 12, 2010 11:44 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: a query
>
> Dear All,
>
> On a different aspect of Natalie's original sentence (' Wemberly worried
> that she might drip on her new dress').
>
> Am I alone in finding the use of 'drip' with a person as subject odd?  It
> would seem more natural to my English ear to say
>
> Wemberly worried that she might allow a drip to fall on her new dress.
>>
> One could, of course, say
>
> Wemberly worried that she might splash/splatter/stain/blotch her new
> dress.
>
> Edmond
>
>
> Dr. Edmond Wright
> 3 Boathouse Court
> Trafalgar Road
> Cambridge
> CB4 1DU
> England
>
> Email: [log in to unmask]
> Website: http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/elw33/
> Phone [00 44] (0)1223 350256
>
>
>>
>
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface
> at:
>      http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> and select "Join or leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface
> at:
>      http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> and select "Join or leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>
>
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface
> at:
>      http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> and select "Join or leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/