the American way

[waterborne]

Just in the sentense:"We need to rebuild the ecomony the American way." ;Anybody can tell me what does the "the American way" act here,a adverbal phrase or a prepositon preceeding those words is dropped.

[TheParser]

Just in the sentense:"We need to rebuild the ecomony the American way." ;Anybody can tell me what does the "the American way" act here,a adverbal phrase or a prepositon preceeding those words is dropped.

NOT A TEACHER


(1) What a great question!

(2) Ordinary native speakers such as I learn so much while trying to answer members'

questions.

(3) Here is what I have found. (By the way, welcome to usingenglish. com. If a teacher

gives you a different answer, you must accept his/her answer as the correct one. If a

teacher shows me that I have given you a wrong answer, I shall immediately delete

this post.)

(4) It would be easy to say that the preposition "in" has been dropped. But many

times the easy way is the wrong way.

(5) It is only my opinion that we are dealing with a noun ("way") that is being used as

an adverb. The term used by some books is the adverbial objective. (When you

have time, you may wish to google for more detailed information.)

(6) I shall now cite some examples that I found in two books and in one Web result:

(a) Do it this way. (Descriptive English Grammar explains this as an example of an

adverbial objective expressing manner.)

(b) Have it your own way. (A Grammar of the English Language says the noun

completes the meaning of the verb.)

(c) Having sampled America [in] that way, Europe believes and trusts America.

(That sentence comes from the same book. The author, a great grammarian named

George O. Curme, put the preposition in brackets. Usually brackets indicate that a

word is not necessary. He included this sentence with his other examples, so I

assume that he wants to say that "that way" is also an adverbial objective. But if

you wanted to change it to a prepositional phrase (by adding "in"), that would also

be OK. (I guess.)

(d) Finally, I found this on a website run by Mr. Eugene R. Moutoux, who says this is

an adverbial objective:

He wants to do things his own way.

Suppose we changed it to: They want to do things the American way. I think that

it would come awfully close to your: We need to rebuild the economy the American

way.

(7) Therefore, I think that we can call "the American way" in your sentence an

adverbial objective. Nonetheless, I feel that teachers should not give this kind of

question on a test, for some (many?) native speakers might feel that it is really a

prepositional phrase (with the deleted "in").

(8) Let's see what the language professionals tell us.

[SoothingDave]

I first thought adverbial phrase, then wondered about a missing "in" as well. Decided it's an adverb for sure. How do we want to rebuild the economy? The American way.

[waterborne]

Thanks a lot! guys