I would like to know how the phrase after the object should be analysed in the pattern verb + noun + prepositional phrase, and in particular whether it is an object complement or an adverbial. Below are the examples that prompted the question. Examples about put Put the glass on the table. The man pervades London, and no one has heard of him. That's what puts him on a pinnacle in the records of crime. From The Final Problem by Arthur Conan Doyle. Holmes is describing his opponent Professor Moriarty, head of a powerful criminal organisation in 1890s London, to Watson. Put it down. Two students are queueing in a canteen. At the checkout the second student picks up the first student's meal by mistake and lifts it off the counter, and a staff member says this. This put him into a frightful state. Naturally, I made it clear to Sir Humphrey that I might not do so were I myself to be put more fully in the picture. Hacker: "When a nation's been going downhill you need someone to get into the driving seat, and put his foot on the accelerator." His secretary: "I think perhaps you mean the brake, Minister." Hacker, in his diary: I simply do not know whether this earnest young man is being helpful, or is putting me down. Examples 4 to 6 are from the novelisation of the BBC series Yes, Minister. My notes on each I take on the table to be a prepositional phrase functioning as an adverbial. Keep the glass on the table does not change the meaning very much, yet I still cannot decide whether the phrase is adverbial or an object complement in either sentence. On a pinnacle in the records of crime names an abstract standing, even though it is introduced by on. Incidentally, the Oxford Learner's Dictionaries give at as the usual preposition with pinnacle. Substituting keep gives That's what keeps him on a pinnacle in the records of crime, which shifts the focus to maintaining the standing rather than bringing him to it. Here down is an adverb. Since the meal was resting on the counter a moment earlier, the endpoint of put it down is the very state that keep it down would maintain, so the two verbs land on the same result. Into a frightful state is an abstract condition rather than a concrete location as in example 1 and 3. This is the passive voice of an idiom, so put cannot be changed. Were I myself to be kept more fully in the picture is possible English, but it is no longer the idiom. Put down here is a phrasal verb, the definition of which is given by OLD: (informal) to make somebody look or feel stupid, especially in front of other people The context is his secretary has just corrected his slip of the tongue and made him look foolish. Examples about keep Keep it clean. Adapted from a notice on public transport, followed by Take your rubbish with you. I have reconstructed the wording from memory, so it may not be verbatim. Clean is an expected quality of the object. Keep it a secret. A secret is an expected character of the object. Keep children away from fire. Away from fire seems adverbial, describing the distance to be maintained from a danger. Fortunately Sir Bernard kept this memo among his personal papers, and we reproduce it here, written on Sir Humphrey's margin-shaped notepaper — Ed. Here keep means store or retain rather than maintain in a state, and among his personal papers gives the exact place of storage. Unlike clean and a secret in the first two examples, this phrase can be dropped: Sir Bernard kept this memo is still a complete sentence meaning he did not discard it. That test seems to me to point towards an adverbial reading. In my opinion, keep is a stationary verb. Nevertheless, AI (Claude) tells me Put is dynamic and telic. It is a caused motion verb, sometimes called a placement or transfer verb. It expresses transition: the object was not there, and the verb brings it about that it comes to be there. Below is the screenshot of the chat. Learners fall into this confusion easily, since a complement may be a noun phrase, an adjective phrase, an adverb phrase or a prepositional phrase, at least as far as I know. I have met several similar patterns in my reading but cannot list them all here. I have given a number of examples, but they all bear on the same core question. Any ideas, further examples or explanations on the pattern verb + noun + PP would be much appreciated.
