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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 subject is defined as the verb argument that appears outside the canonical finite verb phrase, whereas the object is taken to be the verb argument that appears inside the verb phrase. [3] This approach takes the configuration as primitive, whereby the grammatical relations are then derived from the configuration.
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 ]
Grammatical abbreviations are generally written in full or small caps to visually distinguish them from the translations of lexical words. For instance, capital or small-cap PAST (frequently abbreviated to PST) glosses a grammatical past-tense morpheme, while lower-case 'past' would be a literal translation of a word with that meaning.
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.
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.
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 ...
Null complement anaphora elides a complete complement, whereby the elided complement is a finite clause, infinitive phrase, or prepositional phrase. The verbal predicates that can license null complement anaphora form a limited set (e.g., know, approve, refuse, decide). The elided complement cannot be a noun phrase. Q: Do you know what happened?