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When some prepositional objects follow certain verbs they appear to also act as direct objects of the verb. For example,
'talk about linguistics'
'wait for an answer'
'listen to music'
'look at her'
When we form Object questions with these predicates, they end with a prepostion.
'What were you talking about? Who are you waiting for? Where are you from?' etc.
Would you agree that these are not adverbial prepositional phrases. Could they be classified as verb complements?

Technically, a complement cannot be omitted from a sentence. For example, 'Put the book on the table'. But 'on the table' is definitely an adverbial phrase and we don't end the interrogative mood of this predicate with a preposition. 'Where did you put the book (on)?' Whether a prepositional phrase can or cannot be omitted is irrelevant to whether it can be split in a question.

Is there any classification for prepositional phrases that can be split in questions. 'Who did you go to the store with?' The phrase 'with my friend' would seem to be an adverbial phrase of manner modifying 'go'. The phrase 'about linguistics' seems to complete the verb 'talk' rather than modify it. The rule that sentences can't end with a preposition is obviously ridiculous when you consider the questions, 'About what did you talk?' or 'To which song did you listen?' or 'From where are you?'. That isn't educated or formal speech. It's completely artificial.

Some grammars simply refer to these constructions as containing linking prepositions, but that doesn't confirm whether the clause is transitive or identify the function of the entire prepositional phrase. Does anyone agree that prepositional phrases can act as a kind of complement (verb complement?) that can be omitted or replaced with an adverbial phrase? 'He talks a lot'.

I would say that there are two types of prepositional phrases that can be split in questions. one acts as a complement and one as an adverb. Shouldn't there be some classification to acknowledge that a split prepositional phrase pattern can be used to form questions with them?

Ouyang (BTW welcome to this place) I'm going to stick my neck out. I'm not sure that the question form isn't a red herring. It obscures the difference that you describe but doesn't alter it.

An important distinction that may be relevant is between prepositions that aren't necessary for meaning such as "listen (to)" , talk (about) etc and those that are.

Talk me, Listen me, Talk linguistics, Wait me, Speak him

don't miss any of their meaning by lacking their "correct" prepositions (in fact "Talk Politics" is common enough to make "Talk linguistics" sound fine, perhaps it's by analogy with "talk Spanish"). These seem to be the direct objects/verb compliments that you are talking about. The presence of the preposition is a norm of the language but could be lived without.

In other situations you need that preposition because another is possible.

Another point that I'd like to make is that "where" is something of a special case. In "Where are you going to" that "to" is something of a redundancy but generally "where" is not generally accompanied by a dangling preposition. We do say "What did you put the book on?" because that "on" could be another preposition.
"Where are you from?" is another curiosity. "Where are you?" has a distinctly different meaning in a way that "What are you talking?" doesn't, which makes that "from" a necessity.
I suppose also that the "to" of "Where are you going/driving/ running (to)?" and the "from" of "Where are you from?" could also be contrasted with *"Where are you going from", *"Where are you going towards", *"Where are you to (as in "bound)"?" which represent ideas if not recognised spoken forms.

Anyway, leaving aside the grey areas of "Where/to and so on, there does seem to be a distinction between:

I'm looking at the ship, Am I looking at the ship, What am I looking at?

where the "at" is arguably not necessary, despite the existence of "I'm looking towards the ship/from the ship", and situations where the preposition is necessary because another one would change the meaning:

"Put the book the bed" needs a preposition.

So I'm inclined to agree with your last paragraph. But as I say, I don't see what dimension the Q form adds.

Thanks for the reply Juan. You wrote that,

JuanTwoThree wrote:I don't see what dimension the Q form adds.

I included the poll because I specifically want to know whether anyone has ever read about prepositional phrases which are split in questions being classified differently because of the difference in the sentence structure of the questions in which they can be used. What I'm interested in determining is whether these phrases constitue different sentence patterns. Traditionally, there are five basic sentence patterns, but I don't think sentences that contain splittable phrases are variations of these. I think there are two additional sentence patterns that contain these phrases.

For example, I would say that 'She told him her password.' is a different pattern than 'She said something to him.' Sentences that contain both indirect and direct objects can usually take two forms. As in, 'He gave me a book' and 'He gave a book to me'. I don't think these are variations of one pattern, but two distinct patterns. We can't say, 'She said him something.'

You wrote that

JuanTwoThree wrote: Talk me, Listen me, Talk linguistics, Wait me, Speak him
don't miss any of their meaning by lacking their "correct" prepositions (in fact "Talk Politics" is common enough to make "Talk linguistics" sound fine

First, I would say that native speakers don't say 'wait me' or 'speak him'. Whether the meaning is clear is not the point. Chinese will say 'wait me' because they are using Mandarin grammar and the same Subject Verb Object pattern in which they normally use the verb 'wait', 'deng wo'. If someone, uses this pattern, we understand them, but we either identify them as a non-native speaker, a child, or , frankly, someone of low intelligence.

I think that the verb 'talk' can be used in two patterns. It ocassionally is used in the simple S-V-Obj pattern, 'he can talk the talk', but it is usually used in what I believe is a different pattern, as are the other verbs I listed. I'm not sure what to call this pattern, and that's why I posted the question to identify the function of the prepositional phrase.

In Mandarin, verb complements are commonly used, but they don't contain anything like prepositions. However, I use that term to describe the two patterns that I don't believe are variations of the traditional five.
1 Subject - Linking Verb - Subject Complement
2 Subj - Intransitive Verb
3 S - Transitive Verb - Object
4 S- V - Indirect object - Direct Obj
5 S - V - Object - Object Complement

6 S - V - Verb Complement
7 S - V - Object - Verb Complement

I would say that. 'He's staring at me' and 'I dream about flying' are examples of pattern #6 and that 'He put it on the table' and 'She bought it for you.' are examples of pattern #7.

I also don't think 'He's an American' and "He is from America" are necessarily the same pattern. The first is obviously pattern #1, and if you define pattern #1 as S-V-Complement, then the second could be a variation of #1, but I think it is an example of pattern #6.

You wrote that,

JuanTwoThree wrote: In "Where are you going to" that "to" is something of a redundancy but generally "where" is not generally accompanied by a dangling preposition. We do say "What did you put the book on?" because that "on" could be another preposition.
"Where are you from?" is another curiosity. "Where are you?" has a distinctly different meaning in a way that "What are you talking?" doesn't, which makes that "from" a necessity.
I suppose also that the "to" of "Where are you going/driving/ running (to)?" and the "from" of "Where are you from?" could also be contrasted with *"Where are you going from",

I think, 'I come from a land down under' and 'He's from Australia' are the same pattern. When we ask 'who were you talking to?' vs 'who were you talking about?' the preposition tells us which sense of the verb 'talk' that we want to know about. I would say that the two questions, 'where did you put it?' and 'which drawer did you put it in?' are variations of two different patterns, #3 and #7.

I think 'Who did you go to the store with?' on the other hand is a modification of 'Did you go to the store?'. I am unsure as to whether 'to the store' is a complement of adjunct. I would like to classify it as a complement and the sentence as pattern #6. We do need the preposition when we ask, 'which store did you go to?'. However, I don't want to tell my students something that is going to conflict with every other grammar book in the world.

I think the nature of the preposition is key to this issue. Swan refers to prepositional verbs as being distinct from adverbs and phrasal verbs, but he doesn't address the relationship of the prepositional phrase to the verb. For example, in 'look after my dog' he completely disregards whether 'dog' is a prepositional object or direct object. Pretty much all grammars that I have read also avoid the issue.

I think that in the functions of prepositions there is a kind of gradation.
'come in', 'come in the morning', 'came from L.A.', 'came apart',

As, I said before, the distinction between whether a prepositional phrase is a complement or and adjunct is irrelevant to the patterns in which they can be used. My interest is in explaining sentence patterns to students and my focus on classifying prepositions and prepositional phrases is simply a means to do this.

On second thought, I'd say that 'He's an American' and "He is from America" are the same pattern of S - Linking Verb - Subject Complement. The complement is a predicate adjective in both cases. However, I do think that a linking verb can take a complement.

For example, 'He appears to be sleeping' and 'He seems to have fixed it'. I don't think that 'to be sleeping' can be classified as a Subject Complement. I think it is a verbal phrase and following a catenative verb it would be an object, 'I would like to be sleeping.'

Many linguists consider Direct Objects to be Verb Complements. If a simple transitive sentence pattern is defined as Subj - Verb - Verb Complement, then I could see that the following sentences would have the same pattern. 'I like sports.' and 'We talked about sports'. I think classifying 'We talked about sports' as a S - V - Adverb pattern is incorrect.

If patterns #4 and #7 are defined as S - V - Verb Complement - Verb Complement , then they could be considered the same. However, you have to declare the sequence of direct and indirect objects irrelevant, and that doesn't seem right. I think classifying both #6 and #7 as different patterns from #3 and #4 is logical, even though they are clearly related. However, I would rather teach students principles that are consistent with other sources, so I'll probably stick with 5 patterns.

References on the internet list a variety of different numbers of basic sentence patterns, but what are designated as distinct patterns are .actually variations in my opinion.

We broadly agree:

There is something of your #3 about some verb+prepositions and my rough-and-ready rule is that it's those which are necessary only because English is "like that". That's why I say that "Wait me" and "Listen me" make sense without their respective prepositions. Comparison with other languages shows the redundancy of these prepositions, so there is no particular reason why it's not "Hear to me" and Listen me" but rather the other way round.

I also have the vague idea that these almost fixed verb+prep combinations stray into the area of PVs in the looser sense of the term. IC analysis might have trouble with "Look at that!"

Whereas the prepositions that can be subsituted for another are far more adverbial. Though even some of these have a default meaning: I would say that "What country do you come from?" or "Which shop did you go to?" are more like the category of prepositions in my first paragraph despite the notional existence of "What country do you come to?" and "Which shop did you go towards/into etc?

(Oh and "where" obviously is a can of worms because a preposition is so often the answer to the "where" question)

Either way these are nuances and the #6 pattern is identical in every case, as you say. It's pattern #6 with a strong hint of meaning #3 or it's pattern #6 being #6.

You brought in two object verbs; I agree with you: "She told him lies" has two genuine objects because it can be seen as both "She told him" and "She told lies" though "She gave him a book" is different because it can't be split in the same way. Though it's rather arbitrary that you can't say "I gave him" so maybe there isn't such a big difference after all.

"I made him a cake" is quite a different thing altogether and is really missing a "for" , especially in "Who did you make a cake?"

Again, the word-patterns are the same so it's interesting but not necessarily something to over-emphasise.

I am in the middle of researching prepositions in an attempt to figure out a better way to teach them to native Chinese (Cantonese) speakers (and hopefully pick up an MA in the process). So, I am deeply interested in this particular thread.

Ouyang, I have a few suggestions for you. (You may find O’Dowd helpful to your particular query because of her explication of linking and situating.)

O’Dowd, Elizabeth M. Prepositions and particles in English
Tyler, Andrea and Vyvyan Evans. The Semantics of English Prepositions
Hill, L. A. Prepositions and adverbial particles
Bolinger, Dwight Le Merton. The phrasal verb in English

These are just a few of the books I’ve been reading. I am immersed in a sea of predication, transitivness, adpreps, landmarks, and a host of other aspects which I have never consciously associated with prepositions. More to the point though, you said:

My interest is in explaining sentence patterns to students and my focus on classifying prepositions and prepositional phrases is simply a means to do this.

My question then, is why do you want to multiply metalanguage by coming up with a special term for prepositions in questions? To my mind, that would be an unnecessary complication. Now, I understand that China, as Hong Kong, tends to get bogged down in metalanguage. By talking about English, students feel like they are talking English, which is not the same thing at all. Rather than multiplying metalanguge, I prefer to teach chunks. I know that is not teaching to test, and I know students need to pass tests, but it is far better to teach them to communicate. So, how to reconcile the two? Have you managed it? If so, how?

Does anyone agree that prepositional phrases can act as a kind of complement (verb complement?) that can be omitted or replaced with an adverbial phrase? 'He talks a lot'.

Yes, of course. Does anyone diagram sentences anymore? (No one seems to in Hong Kong, so I thought I'd ask.) A simple diagram clearly shows how phrases work in sentences. You can have prepositional chunks that work as verb complements, adverbs or adjectives. Diagramming the chunk shows this beyond question. Knowing (seeing) how these chunks work in the sentence can show how they may or may not be replaced by different kinds of chunks to say the same thing.

One of my sources, (Matthews, Stephen and Virginia Yip. Cantonese: a comprehensive grammar) suggests that there are no true prepositions in Chinese, because all prepositional aspects are subsumed in co-verbs. I don't know Potungwa nearly as well as I do Cantonese, but I have been assured by Cantonese speaking Potungwa teachers that the verbal structure is very close in the two dialects. How do you respond to Matthews and Yip's assertion, Ouyang? If you find their position viable, how might that affect the way you teach English prepositions?

Thanks for the book recommendations Lotus. I will check them out after I return to America in a couple of months.

You asked,

why do you want to multiply metalanguage by coming up with a special term for prepositions in questions?

Actually, I'm not interested in adding metalanguage for these prepositions. I just wanted to know if anyone had ever encountered it.

The English level of my current students varies from beginner to intermediate. I use the mandarin word jie ci in one of my lessons, and I do have all the students say 'preposition' just because it's a difficult word for them and it's a problem area. They often choose the wrong preposition for verbs, and they often use the mandarin structure for adjectival prepositional phrases.

For example, many of them tend to say 'put the book to the table' and 'the England of Queen'. I use a game of solitaire, and make the students tell me where and which card to play using both an adjectival and adverbial preposition, e.g. 'put the queen of hearts on the king of spades'.

When I say many of my students are beginner level, I mean more than half of them find this to be very difficult, even after listening to 20 students struggle to give me similar commands. So obviously, I'm not using a lot of metalanguage with them. My goal is to eventaully provide them with something similar to a series of sentence diagrams along with an explanation of the English grammar in Mandarin. I don't believe in teaching grammar during oral English, but I believe in what some linguists call 'the commucative grammatical approach'.

When sentence diagramming was invented in the 19th century, linguistics didn't really exist. There were no distinctions made between complements and adjuncts. I've been looking for rationales for identifying verb complements which include verb objects and don't exclude removable complements.

I simply disagree that there are no prepositions in putonghua. First of all, prepositions are a subclass of adpositions, and postpositions are more common in mandarin. Postpositions also occur in English. Mandarin postpositions certainly are different than prepositions, but, as I wrote earlier, I think prepositions have a very malleable relationship with other words.

Chinese prepositions seem pretty pure and classic to me, since they generally indicate position or motion and don't do a lot else.

I'll continue to make UNE look bad and admit I can't really grasp what people are talking about in this thread. The thing which upsets the Chinese students is Wh- movement, because Chinese doesn't display it, I would have thought. Can't you make that kind of movement and leave a preposition behind with any English prepositional phrase?

Thanks for the book recommendations Lotus.

You are welcome, Ouyang. In an attempt to further muddy the water and complicate things for you, here is one more book that I am currently reading. Gorlach, Marina. Phrasal Constructions and Resultativeness in English I have not found a term for the kind of split in questions that your intial post queried, but she does deal with the phenomenon.

Actually, I'm not interested in adding metalanguage for these prepositions. I just wanted to know if anyone had ever encountered it.

Ah, well done. No, I haven't, but now I'm keeping my eyes peeled for special terms.

The English level of my current students varies from beginner to intermediate. I use the mandarin word jie ci in one of my lessons

Given the level of your students, do you find yourself explaining things in Mandarin? Even if you don't, (although I have used Cantonese at times, I personally have qualms about doing so except in extreme cases), I have found a book that you might find useful. The first publication was in 1967, but it is still very interesting. The English version is: Wood, Frederick T. English Prepositional Idioms. The Chinese version, which you would do much better to have, is translated by Yu Shixiong and Yu Chien Wen. It is an exact reproduction of the English version with full Chinese translations for every entry. In spite of its age, I find it quite useful and sometimes very entertaining.

I simply disagree that there are no prepositions in putonghua. First of all, prepositions are a subclass of adpositions, and postpositions are more common in mandarin. Postpositions also occur in English. Mandarin postpositions certainly are different than prepositions, but, as I wrote earlier, I think prepositions have a very malleable relationship with other words.

Thank you for that. I hoped that I was not alone in my reaction to this book. Granted, it a text for English speakers to learn to speak Cantonese, so there won't be a lot of harm done, I hope.

woodcutter wrote:Chinese prepositions seem pretty pure and classic to me, since they generally indicate position or motion and don't do a lot else.

Thank you for your insight, Woodcutter. Herein, I believe, lies the crux of the problem with prepostions for Chinese speakers. No matter what some of the literature may suggest, L1 definately influences how L2 is processed and assimilated. English preposition (and particle) use is much more complicated than Chinese translations can possibly relate. Since many students rely on a word for word translation, especially in the early stages of language learning, prepositions present one of the toughest hurdles for them. I try hard to wean my students away from their electronic dictionaries and train them to think in chunks, but often, it's like asking them to fly.

The thing which upsets the Chinese students is Wh- movement, because Chinese doesn't display it, I would have thought. Can't you make that kind of movement and leave a preposition behind with any English prepositional phrase?

Could you please give some examples of what you're talking about here? I want to make certain I understand exactly what you are saying before attempting an answer.

According to transformational grammar, I think, an English question like

"What is the book on?"

is formed by taking the basic sentence "The book is on the (x)" and moving the X to the front of the sentence, and transforming it to a Wh- question word. (you'll notice it doesn't quite work out properly, but there is always an excuse for that!). Chinese doesn't have that kind of question, they simply ask "The book is on the what?"

The preposition left behind would presumably be the same part of speech as it was before, i.e a normal preposition, in a normal prepositional phrase, which is a kind of adverbial . Not everyone likes transformational grammar, but it's the mainstream view as far as I know.

Personally I take a minimalist approach to most things. With enough input, people eventually grasp that word-for-word translation isn't going to work, and if they don't, well tell them just that. If you try to use concepts that are difficult and contentious on native speaker language forums to explain things to foreign students, I find it tends to be tough going. I don't therefore advocate a student course in transformational grammar, but the basic idea as I have written it here is informative and might not be too difficult perhaps? I don't know if I would mention it in China myself, the problem never seemed that severe.

I can see how discussing transformations is relevant to Lotus' query, but how does TG deal with questions like 'The book's WHERE/on WHAT?!'. The few books that I've flicked through that touch on the subject have never struck me as being particularly bothered with actual functional English usage (i.e. with real variety).

All the material that I have on Transformational Generative Grammar is on an introductory level. I've recently found some lecture notes by a Chinese linguist for an introduction to syntax course that make some good points about complements and WH-movement.
http://ling.wisc.edu/~yafei/courses/330_01/wk4.html
http://ling.wisc.edu/~yafei/courses/330_01/wk5.html

Ya Fei teaches in Wisconsin. Another Chinese linguist whose textbook seems to be very popular in China is Hu Zhuang Lin. Hu's linguistics textbook is somewhat critical of TGG, and he seems to favor the Systemic-Functional approach to syntax.

Although, I only know some of the basic principles of TGG, I do know that it is not at all focused on helping students learn a second language. Chomsky has been very clear about that. 'The commucative grammatical approach' to EFL that I methioned earlier is advocated in Hu's textbook.

I believe that the concept of English verb complements is only useful to EFL students with respect to transformations of sentence patterns, and so I've decided to define them by that criteria. The constituency tests that Ya Fei mentions seem like a sound basis for expanding the scope of prepositional phrases that can be designated as verb complements.

In my simple diagramming system, I indicate whether a Prep Phrase can be queried with an Interrogative Pronoun (with a split preposition) or with an Interrogative Adverb or with both. Some PPs that can only be represented by an Interrogative Adverb are definitely not adjuncts. Some PPs that have traditionally been considered as adjuncts cannot be represented by an Interrogative Adverb.

At this point, I'm satisfied with my rationale for how I will code PPs and I'm moving on. If it helps students generate language, then that's good enough for me.

As I said, I don't know if I would mention TG. 99% of students are terrified of grammar, and most teachers are too. Rightly so, for I suspect that no mortal can give a coherent global explanation for all that we say. Therefore we have a solemn duty to present things as simply as we can, even if that means making gross oversimplifications.

If a Chinese student says "The dog of leg" I would say "You can't translate that word for word, you say 'the dog's leg'"

If the student says "table on" I would say that our position words go before the noun.

If they say "The book is on what" I might mention that we usually need to start our questions with a question word.

If they have trouble with matching the right verbs to the right prepositions to make particular phrases, I'd say I'm not surprised. Work like a beaver for 5 years and you may learn them all.