Prepositional Object, Complement of Preposition and other confusing stuff.

Welcome to English Forums!

It would be better if someone familiar with the Longman book responded to your question.  I am not familiar with that book.  Nevertheless, I will try to answer your questions.

1.  An object of a preposition always follows a prepositional verb, yes.  A prepositional verb is a combination of verb and preposition.  The preposition is followed by its object.  However, an object of a preposition does not only follow a prepositional verb.  Prepositional phrases, that is, preposition and noun, can be found in other locations within a sentence.  If the phrasal verb is intransitive, nothing need follow it.  If it is transitive its direct object follows.

2.  I believe that "Object of a Preposition" and "Complement of a Preposition" are simply two different terms which mean the same thing.  According to the quote you provided from your book, the entity referred to by both of those terms would be an oblique object.

3. Neither example given is passive, so I'm uncertain what you are asking regarding the passive.

In my opinion, the standard terminology says that there are direct objects, indirect objects, and objects of prepositions.  The object of the preposition "to" can be an indirect object and an object of a preposition at the same time.  Otherwise the three categories are mutually exclusive.

Paul won the prize.  ("the prize" is a direct object.)
Paul gave Mary the letter.  ("Mary" is an indirect object. "letter" is a direct object.)
Paul gave the letter to Mary.  ("Mary" is the object of the preposition "to" and is an indirect object. "letter" is again a direct object.)
Paul traveled to Italy. ("Italy" is the object of the preposition "to" but is not an indirect object.)
The man with the black hat drove his car into the garage.  ("hat" is the object of the preposition "with".  "garage" is the object of the preposition "into".  "car" is a direct object.  Note that "with the black hat" has an object of a preposition, but it is not positioned after a verb.)

I believe Longman wants to classify these different kinds of objects differently.  He wants only two categories:  direct objects (with the same definition as seen in the examples above), and oblique objects (any other kind of object).

CJ

Can there be any other interpretations of that?

Yes, indeed, there can be other interpretations.

"I" is subject; "would like" is a verb phrase; "to have another tea" is a non-finite clause used as the direct object of "would like".  The subject of this subordinate clause is implied "I".  The verb of this clause is "have" and the direct object is "another tea".

CJ

MichalS wrote:

Hi, I'm a new member on the forum. My name's Michal and I'm from Poland. I've been learning descriptive grammar of Enlgish lately. Reading LONGMAN Grammar of Spoken and Written English, I've come across a couple of problems which are hard for me to overcome. I hope that you will help me with that  A lot of my doubts arose after reading a short passage about Prepositional Objects in the book mentioned above. I'll quote it so you know better what I'm refering to. "(...) Prepositional objects and indirect objects are alike in that they require a mediating element (a preposition or a direct object). The correspondence is particularly close with indirect objects and corresponding prepositional construction: Indirect object         He [gave] Carrie a ring. Prepositional object         Mr Evans [gave] it [to] me. To stress the correspondence, it may be convenient the use the term oblique object (...)" And here are my questions: 1) Does Prepositional Object always follow a Prepositional Verb or does it appear in other contexts? And what follows a Phrasal Verb? 2) What's the difference between Prepositional Object and Complement of a Preposition and which one is called 'Oblique Object'? 3) I always thought that Indirect Object stays an object in passive but the passage above shows that it becomes Prepositional Object in this case... Or maybe I just get it wrong??? Please, answer to these questions if you can because these things are haunting me all the time. Thank you, Michal