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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.
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.
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.
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]
Adverbial complement is the term used to identify an adverbial phrase that is necessary to the meaning of the verb or utterance. Adverbial complements always appear after the verb that they modify. If the verb is intransitive, the complement will appear directly after the verb; if the verb is transitive, the complement will appear after the ...
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)
Verbs are used in certain patterns which require the presence of specific arguments in the form of objects and other complements of particular types. (A given verb may be usable in one or more of these patterns.) A verb with a direct object is called a transitive verb. Some transitive verbs have an indirect object in addition to the direct object.
The first English grammar, Bref Grammar for English by William Bullokar, published in 1586, does not use the term "auxiliary" but says: All other verbs are called verbs-neuters-un-perfect because they require the infinitive mood of another verb to express their signification of meaning perfectly: and be these, may, can, might or mought, could, would, should, must, ought, and sometimes, will ...