Quote:
Originally Posted by Casiopea  Nope, sorry. But what I can tell you is that pushed is the main verb (speakers know that not because pushed is inflected, but because open isn't inflected; i.e., *he pushed opens the door, which is a common error among language learners, even children). Open, functions as the verb's object; it's a bare infinitive.
[1] He pushed (to) open the door.
[2] He pushed the door (to get it to) open.
In other words, the solution is in ellipsis.
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What did you mean by one unit, one phoneme? |
I had a perfunctory search through my books and Google, but I can't find anything about active/stative combinations.
Your rationalisation is different to mine... pushed is the head because open isn't inflected. You never get a verb-verb combination with both verbs inflected, and as far as I know it is always the head that takes the inflection. It all adds up to the same thing in the end.
My one unit one phoneme suggestion to kohyoongliat is to treat pushed open as a single item rather than trying to analyse what is verb/adverb etc. He is a private tutor, so perhaps his students don't need to go into such detail. A phoneme is a sequence of sounds in speech; according to one theory we speak in phonemes - sequences of words - rather than word by word.