Mexican-Americans in the southwestern United States

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Dixielee

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Hi,
I am using Analytical Grammar, which is difficult, but good. My granddaughter is learning to diagram sentences. How would you designate the parts of speech in this sentence?

"Mexican-Americans in the southwestern United States identify with these rugged people." I agree with the answer key except for the active verb. The key says the av is identify and "with these rugged people" is a prepositional phrase. That would be "identify...people" In my opinion, that has a different meaning than "identify with...people".

I hope you can explain this to me in order for me to teach it correctly.

Thank you,
Dixie
 

probus

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Identify can be either transitive or intransitive, with somewhat different meanings. In the transitive case it takes a direct object. For example "The police have identified a suspect". In the intransitive case it is reflexive; the person is identifying him or herself, and we specify as or with what the person identifies. There is therefore no direct object. For example "Although his parents had immigrated from Mexico, Juan never identified as latino." A recent trend acknowledges the reflexive nature of the word in that people have started using the new compound self-identify.
 

TheParser

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Hello, Dixielee:


Thanks for the interesting question. I had never thought much about the verb "identify."

I have found online the opinion of the Macmillan Dictionary.

It claims that "identify with" is a phrasal verb used in a transitive manner. It means something like "understand."


Its example sentence: "He didn't seem to be able to identify with ordinary people and their aspirations." (my emphasis)
 
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PaulMatthews

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Mexican-Americans in the southwestern United States identify with these rugged people.

The underlined clause has an unexpressed reflexive object, but the salient interpretation is "identify themselves with these rugged people".

Because the object of "identify" is lacking, the clause/verb is considered to be intransitive, though there is no semantic difference between the transitive and intransitive constructions.

"Identify" is a prepositional verb here in that it specifies a PP complement with the preposition "with" as head.
 
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