hi steven / stevo,
you made me think and remember an old issue of saweli (since when it
used to be katanda). my "stupid" question has always been: how should
one adequately say "he called me a friend". i think i have a solution
now, and i would like to know what you think of it.

the part of the sentence "he called me" (or "he named me", "he labeled
me") actually changes it's part of speech from "sentence" to
"preposition". "a friend" is the argument of this preposition.

(end of solution)

nonetheless, "he called me a friend" is an entire sentence, even though
it is "just" a prepositional phrase. the transitive word "called" is
marked to be the root of the sentence, and this fact remains even though
the sentence may be linked with other sentences by conjunctions, or - in
this case - to the argument "a friend".

we are used to see prepositions as tags, that never change. but in
german, for instance, there are the conjunctions "als" and "wenn"
(prepositions of sentences, so to say), depending on if the argument
sentence is in past tense or present tense, similar to verbs.

so... what do you think?

bye,
stephan / stefo