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– The main verb help is the complement of the auxiliary verb, will. Chris gave up. – The particle up is the complement of the verb gave. as a friend – The noun phrase a friend is the complement of the preposition, as. Construed in the broad sense, many complements cannot be understood as arguments.
In traditional grammar and guide books, a linking verb is a verb that describes the subject by connecting it to a predicate adjective or predicate noun (collectively known as subject complements). [1] Linking verbs include copulas such as the English verb be and its various forms, as well as verbs of perception such as look, sound, or taste and ...
Adverbial complements often accompany verbs of caused motion such as put or place: She put the cheese back. *She put the cheese. Now place the vase on the mantlepiece. *Now place the vase. However, they can occur with other types of verbs as well: We are staying in a hotel. *We are staying.
In traditional grammar, a subject complement is a predicative expression that follows a copula (commonly known as a linking verb), which complements the subject of a clause by means of characterization that completes the meaning of the subject. [1] When a noun, noun phrase, or pronoun functions as a subject complement, it is called a ...
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)
The plural verb were agrees with the post-verb noun phrase two lizards, which suggests that two lizards is the subject. But since two lizards follows the verb, one might view it as being located inside the verb phrase, which means it should count as the object.
Tesnière used the word actants to mean what are now widely called arguments (and sometimes complements). An important aspect of Tesnière's understanding of valency was that the subject is an actant (=argument, complement) of the verb in the same manner that the object is. [9]
The presence of complements depends on the pattern followed by the verb (for example, whether it is a transitive verb, i.e. one taking a direct object). A given verb may allow a number of possible patterns (for example, the verb write may be either transitive, as in He writes letters , or intransitive, as in He writes often ).