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When I looked up the word hail in Longman Online Dictionary and Oxford Advanced Dictionary Online, I saw it has been marked as transitive verb. I also noticed by someone's note that a verb followed by a preposition is not be categorized as transitive verb. For example in:
I came to his home
=> come is still intransitive verb.
So could you point out to me the role of as in the example below:
The conference was hailed as a great success.
The function of ‘as’ in your example might be better understood in the active construction ‘They hailed the conference as a great success.’ ‘They’ is the subject, ‘hailed’ is the verb and ‘the conference’ is the object. ‘As a great success’ is an object predicative; that is, in the words of the ‘Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English’, ‘a clause element that occurs after the object and characterizes the object’.
In this construction, ‘as’ may be omitted, leaving ‘They hailed the conference a great success.’ The use of ‘as’, together with ‘like’, is an interesting and complex topic. If you are a foreign learner, you should seek advice on its use from a qualified English teacher, or from an appropriate grammar book.
