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– He is the subject complement of the verb wiped. She scoured the tub. – She is the subject complement of the verb scoured. In those examples, the subject and object arguments are taken to be complements. In this area, the terms complement and argument thus overlap in meaning and use. Note that this practice takes a subject complement to be ...
The complementizer is often held to be the syntactic head of a full clause, which is therefore often represented by the abbreviation CP (for complementizer phrase).Evidence of the complementizer functioning as the head of its clause includes that it is commonly the last element in a clause in head-final languages like Korean or Japanese in which other heads follow their complements, but it ...
One simple test that is often telling is to modify the phrase by right or just. In Standard English, adverb phrases do not accept such modification (e.g., it ran right up the tree [PP]; *it ran right vertically [AdvP].) Also, PPs commonly function as complements in a be VP (e.g., it is in the car), while adverbs cannot normally do so. [16]: 131
An adverbial complement is an adverbial that is required to complete the meaning of a verb, such that if it is removed, it will yield an ungrammatical sentence or an intrinsically different meaning of the verb. They stand in contrast to adverbial adjuncts, which can be removed from a sentence without altering its structure or meaning. [1]
A test to identify whether or not an adverbial phrase is a complement or adjunct is to remove the phrase in question from the sentence. If the sentence no longer makes sense or if its meaning is altered heavily, then the adverbial element is a complement. If the meaning is still intact, it is an adjunct. [14]
Only sentences with a noun as the complement (e.g., "This is my sister") use the copular verb "to be": 是; shì. This is used frequently; for example, instead of having a verb meaning "to be Chinese", the usual expression is "to be a Chinese person" ( 我 是 中国人 ; 我 是 中國人 ; wǒ shì Zhōngguórén ; lit.
Almost every sentence contains at least one noun phrase. Those five beautiful shiny Arkansas Black apples is a noun phrase of which apples is the head. To test, a single pronoun can replace the whole noun phrase, as in "They look delicious". Current economic weakness may be a result of high energy prices.
Complement (linguistics), a word or phrase having a particular syntactic role Subject complement, a word or phrase adding to a clause's subject after a linking verb; Phonetic complement; Complementary, a type of opposite in lexical semantics (sometimes called an antonym)