parsing 26/01/06

Question

Dear teachers,1) Would you please tell me which kind of adverbial is this? It doesn’t seem to be “of location”.My best friend’s son has become first violin in the orchestra of the Royal Opera House. my best friend’s son = subjecthas become = copular / linking verbfirst violin = subject related complement [second violins]in the orchestra of the ROH = adverbial of place / location ??2) The customer sent the store a letter of complaint about the service. The customer = subjectSent = ditransitive verbthe store = indirect objecta letter of complaint = direct objectabout the service = a) adverbial / b) object complement ?Many thanks,Hela

Clive · Accepted Answer

Hi Hela,

I'm not good at naming things, but here are a couple of comments.

1) Would you please tell me which kind of adverbial is this? It doesn’t seem to be “of location”.

My best friend’s son has become first violin in the orchestra of the Royal Opera House.

in the orchestra of the ROH = adverbial of place / location ?? I think it indicates ownership/possession. The 'Royal Opera House' company/organization 'owns' the orchestra. Even if they played in a place far away from the ROH, they would still be named the orchestra of the Royal Opera House.

2) The customer sent the store a letter of complaint about the service.

about the service = a) adverbial / b) object complement ? I see the phrase itself as adjectival, describing the 'letter of complaint'.

Best wishes, Clive

Miriam · Answer

So, here I am, Hela. This is the first post by you I've found about sentence analysis.

1. I think I've posted this before ~~not sure when, though~~ so forgive me if i'm repeating myself. I read once, and I wish I could remember the book or the author, that there si something called "adverbial of figurative place". I think that could apply here. But again, since I can't cite the source of this, you might want to disregard this comment.

2. I'd take "a letter of complaint about the service" as D.O., in which "letter" is the head of the construction, and "of complaint about the service" a postmodifier of "letter". Within "of complaint about the service", you have "of" as the preposition and "complaint about the service" as object of the preposition (or oblique object, which is another name for this construction). "Complaint" is the head of the oblique object and "about the service" is a postmodifier. In "about the service" you have again a preposition, "about"; and its object, "the service". Both postmodifiers (syntactic function) are prepositional phrases (category/type of construction), and the entire D.O is a noun phrase.

It is true that you might want to take "about the service" as a construction outside the D.O., but I personally wouldn't feel comfortabe with it. If we think in terms of meaning, purely, when reading your sentence, "about the service" seems to be ~~to me~~ more closely related to "complaint" than it is to "letter". A "letter about the service" could be any other type of letter, not a complaint only. That's why I'd take "about the service" as part of the D.O, analysed in the way I explained above.

I hope this helps.

Miriam

parsing 26/01/06

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