Grammar Police Officer

And this makes Kevin the Grammar Emperor. I'm just a queen.

Man, my 5th graders would be horrified that grammar is so slippery. It's hard enough for them to remember how to find the entire verb phrase in each sentence.

It's actually in their textbooks; it's not a complex sentence; it was written to be an easy sentence for a 10-year-old to identify the verb in. Whew. Who knew that in an innocent sentence could be such a complex and detailed debate...including the old 'form following function' thing.

Thanks for the parsing, Kev.

There are two possible constructions for this sentence, but "headed for" is not a 2-word preposition.

In the first construction, "is headed" forms the verb combination, which is intransitive. It is in the present tense, passive voice (present tense of the verb "to be" + past particple of the main verb. For active voice, change to "is heading"). "For" is the preposition and its object is "Florida". The prepositional phrase "for Florida" functions as an adverb (it modifies the verb by answering the question, "where?").

In the second construction, "is headed for" forms the verb combination, which is transitive. It is in the present tense/present participle, active voice. Note that the parsing is determined, not by form, but by function. In this construction, the verb "headed" and the preposition "for" have been combined to make a verbal phrase that means something like "approaching." [An example of a verbal phrase is "broke down," which can be used either for loss of emotional control (The child broke down crying) or mechanical failure (My car broke down last summer). Sometimes, this combination does not form a verbal phrase (The window broke down the street).] Although the words within the verbal phrase "headed for" have the form of a past participle and a preposition, functionally, they are acting as a single present participle. And since "for," being part of a verbal phrase, no longer functions as a preposition, "Florida" can no longer be the object of a prepostional phrase. Instead, it is now the direct object of the sentence.

Whether or not you accept the second construction depends largley upon your philosophy of grammar as it relates to language development. A strict grammarian would insist that function must always form. Common usage would be irrelevant. Consequently, the verbal phrase + direct object combination "is headed for Florida" would be seen as nonsense. According to form, "is headed for" would have to be parsed as a present tense, passive voice. But this would imply that the direct object, which would now require the preposition "by," is the agent of action. However, Florida is not approaching the hurricane. Passive voice just does't work that well when it comes to verbal phrases. In order to keep the verbal phrase construction, it would have to be changed to a present participle in form as well as function (Hurricane Gwen is heading for Florida). [It could also work as a simple past tense (Hurricane Gwen headed for Florida), but this would significantly alter the meaning of the sentence by implying that the hurricane's movement is no longer the case.]

My own view on this is that the very fact of a verbal phrase indicates the priority of function over form. If we're going to accept verbal phrases (and perhaps very rigid grammar monsters don't), then we should consider how they are actually used and parse them accordingly.