Taking Bush Serious(ly)

[Matthew Gordon]

In the spirit of dead-horse beating:

The phrase "take X serious" is certainly interpretable as an object
complement structure even if it is also interpretable as a simple
transitive. This helps explain why people who say "take it serious" would
never say "study it serious" or "think serious about it" (anyone heard
these?). That is, I don't think 'serious' is one of those words like
'different' that is sometimes use adverbially. Even if 'serious' does
function adverbially for some speakers, I don't think this explains its use
in 'take it serious' which impressionistically seems more widespread, due,
as I'm trying to argue, to the fact that it's perfectly well formed as an
object complement structure.

Perhaps someone better versed in syntactic argumentation can offer a test
for object complementhood. As for adverbity(?) (adverbosity?), aren't they
famously mobile? In this phrase, serious(ly) doesn't have much mobility.
e.g., *we are seriously taking it (but cf. 'we are seriously studying it').
Of course, this may have more to do with the phrase being idomatically
frozen.

Steve Boatti wrote:

> Matthew Gordon writes:
> "Isn't this an object complement structure (or isn't it analyzable as
> such)? i.e. 'taking it (to be) serious'"
>
> I don't think so. You are assuming "take" in this context means
> "consider." I believe that in the idiom "to take something seriously",
> "take" means "to deal with." This is among the word's many meanings in
> standard dictionaries (e.g., to take something in stride). Indeed,
> Webster's New World, as an example for the "deal with" meaning, uses "to
> take a matter seriously."
>
> Steve Boatti