tailieunhanh - The grammar book teacher course part 92

The first is that rules are not, as we shall see, airtight formulations; they always have "exceptions." While rules may serve a useful purpose, particularly in meeting the security needs of beginning language learners, it is important (hat teachers understand that almost every linguistic category or general¬ization has fuzzy boundaries. Language is mutable—organic, even; therefore its categories and rules are often nondiscrete (Rudicrford 1987; Ijarsen-Freeman 1997). | Chapter 31 Complementation 641 Applying the test to see if the NPs the students and our friend are direct objects of the main-clause verb we again get odd results Who m did the teacher let - Answer The students go home early . Who m did you see Answer Our friend leave the station . As with infinitives that follow instances of verbs of the let see class we cannot say that bare-stern infinitives arc NP objects we will assume that they arc simply clausal complements to the main-clause verb. Since they include no expressed to the AUX position will show the tcnsclcss -imperj as it docs in the case of subjunctive complements. The tree structure for such sentences will be like the following We saw our friend leave the station. SUB pro we Other verbs in this class include feel have hear help make observe and watch We felt the door close behind us. The teacher had us repeat the exercise. They heard the bell ring twice. Please help us move our furniture. Gerund Complements While hat-clauses and infinitives cover a large range of verbal complements in English there is an additional type of complement sometimes called the -ing complement or gerund which must also be discussed. Consider then an additional pair of sentences Fred disliked making phone calls to John . Mary preferred doing other things with her time . The bracketed parts of the two sentences have some of the earmarks of other clauses we have seen specifically subject-control infinitives like those that follow the verb attempt. We seem to have a verb-object order of elements with the logical subject of the bracketed material being the same as the subject of the whole sentence Fred making phone calls to John Fred made phone calls to John. Mary doing other things with her time Mary did other things with her time. 642 The Grammar Book So it appears that the missing subject in these clauses is like the PRO-type subject for some infinitives. Also we seem to have an auxiliary element in the inflection -ing though it is .