more examples of verb phrases please ?

Question

Dear teachers,What’s the syntactic name of the following structures in English ? How can I get more examples of these ? A/ 1) Sylvester cried his eyes out.2) The dog barked him awake.3) Dora shouted herself hoarse.4) Well, the conclusion was that my mistress grumbled herself calm.(What's the meaning of this sentence ?)B/ 1) The floor had also been swept quite clean of debris.2) She was shaken awake by the earthquake.(Are these called “unaccusative verbs" ?)

Paco2004 · Accepted Answer

Hello Hela

A1) Sylvester cried his eyes out.
A2) The dog barked him awake.
A3) Dora shouted herself hoarse.
A4) My mistress grumbled herself calm.
"Cry one's eyes out"(#A1) and "shout oneself hoarse"(#A3) are idioms. "Grumble oneself calm"(#A4) is not so popular as an idiom but it was a phrase used by Bronte in her "Wuthering Heights". It means "grumbe a lot and then get calm". "Bark someone awake"(#A2) is new to me and I don't know whether it is idiomatic. I don't think there is an authorized technical term for such constructs. But [url=http://www.nordlund.lu.se/Nordwebb/forskning/Papers/GoldJacken04.pdf]Adele E. Goldberg (click here) [/url] termed them as " resultative construction" in his book [url=http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:ZZGgZ6FPuS4J:www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0226300862%3Fv%3Dglance+%22resultative+construction%22&hl=ja] "A construction grammar approach to argument structures" (click here) [/url].
B1) The floor had also been swept quite clean of debris.
B2) She was shaken awake by the earthquake.
These are passive versions of the resultative construction.
C1) The train steamed into the station.
I think "steam into" has nothing to do with the resultative construction. "Steam into" is a slang-like colloquial expression for "rush into".

As for the appearance of some gibberish in your posting, it might come from your way of making scripts with Microsoft Word. Please try not to leave unnecessary blank spaces before line changes.
paco

Hela · Answer

Dear Paco,

In fact I didn't leave blanks between the lines and I don't know why it has come up like this.

I tried to get through the links you gave me but nothing appeared on my screen. Would you please tell me what a resultative construction? And do you know where can I get more examples of these?

Many thanks and all the best,

Hela

Pieanne · Answer

The first link requires acrobat reader, and the second one is an Amazon page.

Paco2004 · Answer

Hello Hela

The file I linked is a pdf file. Have you got Acrobat Reader on your computer? If you haven't, it's impossible to access to the file. The essential part of what it tells is as follows:

An identifying characteristic of a resultative sentence is an AP(=adjectival phrase) or PP(=prepositional phrase) that occupies the normal position of a verbal argument, for instance the italicized phrases in (5). We call this phrase the resultative phrase or RP.
(5)
a. Herman hammered the metal flat. [RP = AP]
b. The critics laughed the play off the stage. [RP = PP]
Resultatives must be distinguished from depictive or current-state phrases which look superficially like resultatives (EX : She handed him the towel wet), but which differ syntactically in that they are clear adjuncts, not argument phrases and semantically in that they do not designate states that are contingent on properties of the main verb: i.e., they do not designate results.
A resultative may contain a direct object, in which case the RP follows the object, as in (5); we call such cases "transitive resultatives." Or a resultative may lack a direct object, in which case the RP is immediately after the verb, as in (6); we call these "intransitive resultatives."5
(6) Intransitive resultatives
a. The pond froze solid. [RP=AP]
b. Bill rolled out of the room. [RP=PP]
In some transitive resultatives, the direct object is independently selected by the verb; in others it is not. We refer to the former cases as "selected transitive resultatives" and the latter as "unselected transitive resultatives."
(7) Selected transitive resultatives
a. The gardener watered the flowers flat. [RP=AP]
[cf. The gardener watered the flowers.]
b. Bill broke the bathtub into pieces. [RP=PP]
[cf. Bill broke the bathtub.]
(8) Unselected transitive resultatives
a. They drank the pub dry. [RP=AP]
[cf. *They drank the pub.] (Note that the sign * means the sentence is ungrammatical)
b. The professor talked us into a stupor. [RP=PP]
[cf. *The professor talked us.]
A special case of unselected transitive resultatives has a reflexive object that cannot alternate with other NPs. This is often called a "fake reflexive" (Simpson 1983).
(9) Fake reflexive resultatives
a. We yelled ourselves hoarse. [RP=AP]
Unselected: *We yelled ourselves.
Does not alternate with other NPs: *We yelled Harry hoarse.
b. Harry coughed himself into insensibility. [RP=PP]
Unselected: *Harry coughed himself.
Does not alternate with other NPs: *Harry coughed us into insensibility.
When RP = AP, it normally expresses a property. Some cases of RP = PP also have this semantics, for example (7b), (8b), and (9b). We refer to these two types collectively as "property resultatives"; when we need to differentiate them we refer to "AP property resultatives" and "PP property resultatives." In other sentences with RP = PP, such as (5b) and (6b), the RP expresses a spatial path; we call such sentences "PP spatial resultatives." There are arguably some adjectives that express spatial paths or configurations, such as "free" and "clear"; these may appear in a class of "AP spatial resultatives" such as "He jumped clear of the traffic".
paco

Hela · Answer

Thank you very much Paco,

I'll read through all this and I'll come back to you.

All the best,

Hela

Anonymous · Answer

How can we identify verb phrases in a sentence?

[W]

Anonymous · Answer

hi can you please explain what is verb phrases?

or give me tha examples.

Anonymous · Answer

His money lay on top

Anonymous · Answer

His money lay on top       can you please help me find the action verb or verb phrase

Anonymous · Answer

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more examples of verb phrases please ?

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