Hello Frank
I am at the beginning of a syntactic journey so I will undoubtedly make many mistakes. My apologies if I have misunderstood your arguments. In particular I am not sure what point you are making as nobody has used the term 'the verb in the sentence'. You say that both 'swung' and 'shut' are verbs. In my first post I said, I think more accurately, that both 'swung' and 'shut' are capable of being verbs. That is, capable of being verbs in the appropriate context.
In the present context 'swung' acts as the verb while 'shut' does not. I am not familiar with the term simple predicate but it appears to be what I would call a verb phrase, verb element, or where the verb phrase (element) consists of a single word, the verb.
Barry
Barry,
This is partly because of the confusion of British vs American terms and partly because of the morphology vs syntax division.
They are separate subjects.
I can only use the American system. And by that system, "swung" and "shut" are both verbs (in morphological terms). If you look them up in a dictionary, I think it will say that they are verbs, or derived from verbs.
When speak about how they act within the sentence, then you are in the realm of syntax. A dictionary cannot help you there because it would have to know the sentence.
Why I say that they are both verbs is because the pass the test of changing with time -- Today I swing (shut), yesterday I swung (shut), I have swung (shut). Now, in the case of "shut", the word does not change. It is, however, still a verb.
eg. "to shut", "shutting".
I am not sure if this helps, but what is CRITICAL is that you do not mix syntax with morphology.
Frank
PA And, no, verb phrase is not the same as a simple predicate. I really think that you are failing to realize that syntax and morphology are separate things.