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Clause structure, complements, and adjuncts

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 Abstract

This chapter discusses central concepts in clause structure such as the notion of ‘head’

and the distinction between ‘complements’ and ‘adjuncts’. The different ways in

which constituency and dependency grammars approach clausal heads are examined,

and modern analyses are juxtaposed with the grammatical tradition. Regarding the

distinction between complements and adjuncts, two important issues are discussed: its

relevance to the clause’s semantic structure and how to determine obligatoriness, the

defining characteristic of complements. The use of the term ‘complement’ to refer to

clauses construed as core arguments of main predicates is also explored, particularly

the challenge of explaining complement choice with individual verbs, either by means

of a general complement binding hierarchy or particular subcategorization features

attached to each verb.

Keywords

clause structure, clausal heads, complements, complementation, adjuncts, dependency

grammar, constituency grammar, subcategorization, binding hierarchy, X-bar theory

Chapter 17

Clause structure, complements, and adjuncts

Patrick Duffley

17.1 Introduction

When we speak, we do not simply utter disconnected sequences of words, each of Mis en forme : P

which is a stand-alone unit. Words are organized into coherent groups called phrases

(for example, the beautiful baby is a noun phrase composed of the article the, the
adjective beautiful, and the noun baby); phrases are grouped into clauses and clauses

into sentences (in the sentence The parents spoke quietly because the baby was

asleep, there are two clauses— – a main clause, The parents spoke quietly because the

baby was asleep, and a subordinate clause, because the baby was asleep). A clause is

made up of phrases constituting a subject and a predicate. The subject is what the

clause is about (e.g., the parents); the predicate denotes a property attributed to the

subject (e.g., spoke quietly because the baby was asleep).

Clauses can be finite or nonfinite. A finite clause has a predicate whose core

element is a verb form conjugated for person and tense, as in The baby was asleep. A

nonfinite clause has a predicate whose core element is a verb form which is not

conjugated for person or tense, as in The baby being asleep, the house was quiet.

There are four basic types of nonfinite clauses in English, to-infinitive clauses (For

the baby to be asleep already was unusual), bare infinitive clauses (What! Me not be

on time for a meeting!), past participle clauses (The dishes done, they returned to the

living room) and -ing clauses (Things being what they are, we had better not press the

issue). The typical order in English clauses is Subject-Verb-Object-Adjunct(s), as can

be seen in The mother rocked the baby gently in her arms.

This chapter provides an overview of various ways in which the internal structure

of clauses can be analyszed. It will address questions such as what determines clause

type (headedness), which components of a clause are obligatory and which are

optional (complements versuss. adjuncts), and how the predicate constrains the choice

of obligatory components of the clause (subcategorization).

17.2 The notion of ‘head’ of a clause

2
A central concept in clause structure is the notion of ‘head’, a term which goes back

to Leonard Bloomfield (1933). Bloomfield distinguished between exocentric and

endocentric structures in terms of the relation between the head and the overall

construction. An example of an exocentric construction is John ran, in which the

resulting word-group does not belong to the class of any of its immediate constituents

(the sentence John ran is made up of John, a noun, and ran, a verb, but is itself

neither a noun phrase or a verb phrase). In endocentric constructions, on the other

hand, the resulting phrase belongs to the class of one of its components, designated as

its head. In coordinate endocentric constructions such as boys and girls, the construct

belongs to the class of both of the coordinated constituents, giving rise in this case to

a noun phrase. In subordinate endocentric constructions such as extremely poor, the

whole phrase belongs to the same class as the head, here the adjective poor. The

endocentric/exocentric distinction echoes that between ‘junction’ and ‘nexus’ made a

few years before Bloomfield by Otto Jespersen (1924 [1975]: 115–116): a junction

such as the ‘adjective + noun’ sequence new-born dog forms one single

denomination, “a composite name for what conceivably might just as well have been

called by a single name,” i.e. puppy. A nexus such as the ‘noun + verb’ sequence

Dogs bark “contains two ideas which must necessarily remain separate.”.

In the 1970s, Noam Chomsky proposed that the distinction between exocentric

and endocentric constructions be abandoned in favour of an endocentric analysis

according to which the whole sentence is viewed as an Inflection Phrase (IP),1 an

approach that amounts to treating sentences as extended verb phrases.2 The internal

1
I = Inflection.

2
This gave rise to what is called X-bar Theory (see Chomsky 1970).

3
structure of the sentence thus construed has sometimes been analysed as ternary (NP–

Aux–VP),3 as in Radford (1981: 38), but the recent tendency has been to view it as

binary (NP–I′), with I′ being constituted by I + VP (see Aarts and Haegeman 2006:

139).

As regards the question of determining the head of a clause, two main lines of

thought are found in the literature, represented by constituency grammar on the one

hand (see Borsley, this volume) and dependency grammar on the other (see Herbst,

this volume). In constituency grammar, the head of a construction is the constituent

that shares morphosyntactic features with the construct as a whole (Zwicky 1985: 6).

Heads are needed in constituency grammar to account for the percolation of features,

whereby higher-level constructs inherit features from the component that dominates

the whole (Zwicky 1985: 10–11; Bauer 1990: 21): when a noun is the head of a

phrase, for example, the whole phrase behaves syntactically like a noun. In

dependency grammars, in contrast, syntactic relations are dealt with as holding

between words, rather than constituents. In comparison to constituency grammar,

dependency grammar provides a greater quantity of information on the relation

between a construction’s components. Thus there are many different possible

dependency relations between the items x, y, and z in what a constituency grammar

treats as a single constituent, e.g., [x y z]: y and z might both depend on x; x and y

could depend on z; x on y and y on z, etc. (see Matthews 1981: 84–85). Hudson (1993:

272–273) observes that “virtually any assumptions about heads are compatible with

the basic assumptions of constituent structure.” Thus, although X-bar theory and

3
NP = Noun Phrase; Aux = Auxiliary Verb; VP = Verb Phrase.

4
Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar4 are both constituency grammars, in the

former the mother and the head-daughter of a clause must have the exact same

features, whereas in the latter they are required to share only some features (Gazdar et

al. 1985: 52). Seuren (1998: 226) observes that for a generative-type model

constituency trees fit better with the theoretical syntactic machinery of the grammar

because “the tree structure itself is part of the formulation of the syntactic

transformations,” whereas dependency trees provide a more transparent means for

representing semantic relations in sentences.

Modern dependency grammars are built on the model of Tesnière (1959) and,

like X-bar theory, take the verb as the head of the sentence, viewing the latter’s

structure through the model of a chemical valency configuration determined by the

argument-structure of the verb.5 This entails that subjects, direct objects, and indirect

objects are seen as dependent upon the verb. Hewson (1991b: 2364) points out that

this represents a complete reversal of the European grammatical tradition, in which

the verb was viewed as dependent upon its subject, this dependency being marked by

its agreeing grammatically with the subject. Thus for a traditional grammarian like

Jespersen (1924: 100), the subject is a primary, as is the noun houses in the NP big Commenté [B1]: AQ: quote as above? (1924 [1975]) and as
per the biblio?
houses, and the verb a secondary, like the adjective big in the same construction. Commenté [PD2R1]: As per the biblio.

Traditional grammar is thus a form of dependency grammar, which Hewson argues to

be superior to valency grammar in that it is able to explain: (1) why the verb agrees

4
Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) is a generative theory in which the lexicon

is more than just a list of entries but is richly structured and determines much of the syntax.

5
An argument is an expression needed to complete the meaning of a predicate. For example,

the verb like requires two arguments, a ‘liker’ and ‘something/someone liked’.

5
with its subject and not with its direct or indirect objects, a fact which is mysterious if

all three of these elements are placed on the same level as valency-slot fillers or

‘complements’ of the verb, as in Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 215); (2) why a finite

verb may or may not have an object, but typically cannot exist without a subject (e.g.,

*Opened the door).

Traditional grammar would also seem to have the advantage over both

constituency and valency grammars of conforming more closely to the intuitively-

perceived semantic structure of clauses, in which one feels that the predicate says

something about its subject, and not merely that the subject forms a unit with the

predicate or fills a valency deficit in the latter. As Searle (1969: 119) points out, “the

subject serves to identify an object;6 the predicate, if the total illocutionary act is one

of describing or characterizing, serves to describe or characterize the object which has

been identified.”. Cruse (1986: 105–106) observes in this respect that the predicate

“displays at least one of the characteristics of a semantic dependent, and that is that it

is expected to bring to the construction semantic traits not encapsulated in the

subject.”. The grammatical tradition is carried on in some contemporary approaches

such as Hirtle (2007a: 121), who utilizes the notion of applying a semantic import

(‘what is said’) to a support (‘what it is said about’) to describe the predicate-subject

relation.7

Some dependency grammars allow double dependencies. Thus, Hudson’s Word

Grammar (1988: 194–196; see Cchapter 8) treats Fred as having two heads in (1):

Mis en forme : EXT

6
Searle uses the term ‘object’ here in its everyday sense to refer to an entity.

7
Hirtle uses the term ‘incidence’ to characterize this import/support relation.

6
(1) Fred keeps talking to Mary about himself/*ourselves.
Mis en forme : EXT

This is because Fred is felt to be the subject of both the verb keeps, which agrees with

it in person and number, and the gerund-participle talking, as manifested by its

controlling the reflexive pronoun subordinate to the gerund-participle, which has to

agree with Fred (this is why ourselves is asterisked as ungrammatical in (1)).

Classical generative grammar accounts for why Fred is felt to be the notional subject

of both verbs by ‘subject-to-subject raising’: Fred starts out as the subject of talking

in the lower clause and is raised to the role of subject of keeps in the main clause.

Both the double-head and the raising accounts are problematic, however. The raising

analysis is based on the claim that keep does not assign any theta-role8 to its subject,

i.e. Fred is not represented as a ‘keeper’ in (1) above, unlike in Fred kept my pen. The

validity of this claim depends crucially, however, on how one defines the semantics of

keep: if it is defined as ‘to stay or remain (as in a particular place or condition)’ as in

Webster’s dictionary (1961), it can cogently be argued that in (1) Fred is the one who

persistently remains engaged in the activity of talking to Mary about himself and so

does have a theta-role with respect to the keeping. Of course, by itself this verb does

not make sense as a predicate of Fred (*Fred keeps), but this is simply because its

meaning requires the specification of the activity in which the keeper remains

engaged: since the keeper role is defined as the continuing occupation of the talker

role, the former cannot be conceived independently of the latter. As Achard (2001: 9)

8
Theta-roles (i.e. thematic roles, also known as semantic roles) are referential relations that

arguments have with respect to the action denoted by the verb, e.g., agent, patient,

instrument, location, etc.

7
points out with regard to the raising verb seem in the French equivalent of Marie

seems to understand linguistics easily, it is with respect to the action of understanding

linguistics that Marie is construed as the subject of seem.

As for the double-head analysis, it remains a surface observation that keeps and

talking are understood to share a common subject, but why this should be the case is

not explained. Duffley (2006: 113–115) argues that in structures like (1) the -ing form

is a subject complement of keep9 and denotes an action in progress, so that the

sequence keeps talking evokes the idea of the subject maintaining itself within the

ongoing activity denoted by the gerund-participle, which obviously implies that the

subject of keeps is the same as that of talking.

Hudson (2003a) extends the double-head analysis also to control verbs10 such as

try in (2) below, claiming that the difference between raising and control is not

syntactic but semantic:

Mis en forme : EXT

(2) Fred tried to talk to Mary.

9
Subject complements (also known as subjective predicative complements) are adjectival or

nominal elements that are related to the subject through the verb, as is the adjective quiet in

He kept quiet until they left. The adjective evokes here the state in which the subject

maintained itself over the time period denoted by the verb.

10
Control verbs occur in constructions in which the understood subject of a predicate is

determined by another expression in a higher clause. Thus Fred stopped laughing is a case

of subject control, as the subject of the control verb stopped is also the understood subject

of the subordinate verb laughing; Fred forced Joe to do it, on the other hand, manifests

object control, because the object of the control verb forced is understood to be the subject

of the subordinate verb do.

8
 Mis en forme : EXT

According to Hudson’s syntactic analysis of (1) and (2), both involve the grammatical

function of ‘sharer’, according to which the complement shares its subject with the

matrix verb, but, unlike the raising verb keep, the control verb try assigns a theta role

to its subject, and so Fred is understood to be not just the talker but also the ‘tryer’. As

with the Word Grammar approach to raising, however, this account fails to actually

explain the sharing of the subject Fred by tried and talk. Duffley (2014) argues that a

semantico-pragmatic analysis of the try + to-infinitive construction can provide such

an explanation and predicates his account on the fact that the to-infinitive is not the

direct object of try, but rather a phrase indicating the goal of the trying. This analysis

is based on the contrast with the gerund-participle, which is claimed to be a true direct

object with this verb, as illustrated by (3) and (4) below in which only the -ing form

shows the direct-object characteristics of being replaceable by a pronoun (3b) and

being promotable to the role of subject in a passive construction (3c):

Mis en forme : EXT

(3a) a. I have already tried talking to Mary, but she refuses to change her mind.
(3b) b. I have already tried that, but she refuses to change her mind.
(3c) c. Talking to Mary has already been tried, but she refuses to change her mind.
(4a) a. I have already tried to talk to Mary, but she won’t even meet me.
(4b) b. *I have already tried that, but she won’t even meet me.
(4c) c. *To talk to Mary has already been tried, but she won’t even meet me.11

11
Mair (1990: 105) points out that “although it is convenient to regard the infinitival complements of

the attempt-class of verbs [i.e. monotransitives] as objects, matrix verbs cannot be passivized in the

normal way”:

(ia) She attempted/wanted/decided to ask a question.

(ib) *To ask a question was attempted/wanted/decided by her.

9
 Mis en forme : EXT

This account is consonant with the fact that to has the same meaning when it occurs

with the intransitive verb strive in I strove to talk with Mary as it does with try in I

tried to talk with Mary: in the same way as to talk with Mary represents the goal of

the striving in the first sentence, it represents the goal of the trying in the second.

Thus in (2) above try implies a movement towards a goal, and to evokes the infinitive

talk as the terminal point of this movement. Given this configuration of meanings, it

is perfectly logical that the prospective realizer of talk should be understood to be the

same as the actual realizer of try. Control (e.g., try + to-infinitive) and raising (e.g.,

keep + gerund-participle) can thus both be accounted for by a semantico-pragmatic

explanation predicated on the interaction between the meaning components of these

constructions and their pragmatic implications. There is no need for a double-head

analysis such as that proposed by Hudson, which leaves no room for the intervention

of pragmatic factors in inter-word relations.12

Some authors such as Langacker (1997, 2000), working in the Cognitive Commenté [B3]: AQ: please check, Langacker 2000
appears to be missing from the biblio.
Grammar framework (see Taylor, this volume), employ both the notion of Commenté [PD4R3]: Here is the reference: Langacker,
Ronald W. 2000. Grammar and Conceptualization. Berlin
and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
dependency, seen as more fundamental, and that of constituency, seen as a reflection

The same observation is made by Matthews (1981: 181–182) and Visser (1969: 1312). Their

observations are confirmed by the absence of any attested examples of the passive with transitive

verbs construed with the to-infinitive in the 100-million-word British National Corpus.

12
The distinction between raising and control has also been abandoned in the latest version of

generative grammar, Minimalism (see Boeckx et al., Hornstein and Nunes 2010), due to

the fact that this theory allows arguments to accumulate two or more theta-roles along their

movement-trajectory through a syntactic structure, which means that control can be treated

as a consequence of syntactic movement (see Landau 2013: 62–63).

10
of “the basic psychological capacity for grouping” (1997: 9). Constituency is viewed

by Langacker as emergent rather than basic, reflecting the order in which a complex

symbolic expression is assembled: “a classical constituent emerges just in case a

conceptual grouping based on overlap13 happens to be symbolized by a phonological

grouping based on linear contiguity” (2000: 269–270). In contrast to generative Mis en forme : Surlignage

theory, in Cognitive Grammar constituency “is not invoked for the definition of

grammatical relations like subject and object,” which rather than being defined

configurationally are “characterized in terms of semantic notions as well as

correspondences between subparts of semantic structures” (Langacker 2000: 148– Mis en forme : Surlignage

150). Thus the subject of the clause is defined as the “trajector,”, i.e. the figure or

most salient element within the relational profile denoted by the verb (Langacker Mis en forme : Surlignage

2000: 33, 150). The direct object for its part corresponds to the “landmark” or

secondary figure. However, defining the subject merely as the most salient element

within a relational profile does not do justice to its semantic relation to the predicate,

nor does treating the direct object as a less salient secondary substructure distinct

from the subject-trajector. Langacker himself in another publication defines the direct

object as prototypically “a patient, a physical object, a specific indefinite and the

secondary figure” (1991: 323), and depicts it as “lying downstream from the subject

along an action chain or with respect to some abstract analog of energy flow” (1991:

328ibid., p. 328). This constitutes an implicit admission that the figure-ground

distinction (also known as trajector-landmark), borrowed from perceptual psychology,

13
An example of conceptual overlap would be the relation between the noun box and the

adjective old in the phrase old box: the adjective has a conceptual slot for an entity

possessing the quality that it denotes and the noun specifies the slot-holder.

11
is insufficient of itself to adequately describe the nature of subjects and direct objects

in English.

For Langacker, the head of a construction is the component that “imposes its own

profile as the composite structure profile” (2000: 212–213). Thus in the noun phrase Mis en forme : Surlignage

the table near the door, the head of the phrase is table, and in the prepositional phrase

near the door, the head is near. This echoes Bloomfield’s original definition of the

head as the determinant of the form-class of the whole phrase. The head of a clause is

seen by Langacker as “the relationship profiled by the clause’s composite structure”

(1997: 7). Thus in Alice likes Bill, the verb like profiles a relationship between a

trajector (Alice) and a landmark (Bill), and so corresponds to the head of the clause in

the sense of providing the essential conceptual content that characterizes the profiled

relationship (see also Langacker 2015). This analysis, like that of valency grammar,

makes the verb the head of the sentence.

17.3 Complements versuss. adjuncts

Another important issue in the area of clause structure is the distinction between

complements and adjuncts. In its most general sense, a complement is a word, phrase,

or clause that is necessary to complete the meaning of a given expression (Crystal

1997: 75). Thus in He opened the door the noun phrase the door is necessary to

complete the meaning of the verb opened and is therefore its complement. Huddleston

and Pullum (2002: 219) argue that the most important property of complements is that

they require the presence of a head that licences them. The dependency between

complements and their head verbs is referred to as ‘subcategorization’: verbs are

subcategorized according to what kind of complements they take; for example, open

12
allows a noun object while look does not (*He looked the door), but instead requires

the use of the preposition at to introduce the target of the looking.

In certain approaches (e.g., Pollard and Sag 1994; Huddleston and Pullum 2002;

Miller 2011), the subject of the verb is treated as a verbal complement, based on the

impossibility of a subjectless sequence such as *opened the door. In contrast, an

adjunct is an optional component not subcategorized for by the predicate whose

removal does not affect the grammaticality of the remainder, as for example the

locative prepositional phrase in Mary met Joe at church. Besides subjects and direct

objects, other commonly recognized types of complement are indirect objects (Joe

gave Mary a bouquet), subject complements (Mary was ecstatic), object complements

(Mary found the room warm) and prepositional-phrase complements (He looked at

Mary). Indirect objects denote the beneficiary or destinatory of an action, subject

complements a property of the subject at the time expressed by the verb, object

complements a property of the object at the time expressed by the verb, and

prepositional-phrase complements a participant in the verbal action whose relation to

the latter is defined by the preposition.

Osborne et al., Putnam and Gross (2011: 328–329) point out that a dependency

grammar places adjuncts on the same level as complements. Langacker (2000: 212– Mis en forme : Surlignage

214), for his part, distinguishes between complements and “modifiers,”, the former

being components that elaborate a substructure of their head, and the latter

components whose substructure is elaborated by their head. Thus in the PP near the

door, door is a complement of near because it elaborates the preposition’s landmark,

i.e. it identifies the secondary figure with respect to which the relationship of

proximity is defined, and in the NP the table near the door the PP near the door is a

modifier because the head-noun table elaborates the preposition’s trajector,

13
identifying the entity that is represented as being in a relation of proximity to the

door. One might wonder, however, why a similar analysis to that applied to

headedness on the clausal and sentential levels is not invoked on the phrasal level in

the table near the door: if the table is the trajector of near, and the door its landmark,

should not the preposition near be analyszed as determining the composite structure

profile as a relationship of proximity between two entities, i.e. as the head of the

overall phrase?

Two basic issues arise with respect to the distinction between complements and

adjuncts: (1) its relevance to the semantic structure of the clause and (2) how to

determine obligatoriness versus optionality. With regard to the latter question,

Grimshaw and Vikner (1993: 143) observe that “it is generally held that while

arguments can be obligatory or optional, adjuncts are always optional.”. An example

of an obligatory argument is the direct object in Adam mentioned a problem; an

example of an optional one is the object in Adam was talking politics. A typical

optional adjunct is exemplified by during lunch in Adam mentioned a problem during

lunch. Grimshaw and Vikner argue that there is a class of adjuncts that are obligatory,

namely those occurring with the passives of accomplishment verbs (note the contrast

in acceptability between This house was built last year and *This house was built).

Goldberg and Ackerman (2001) propose that obligatory adjuncts such as these can be

accounted for by pragmatic requirements, in this case the need for the utterance to

have an informational focus. Thus This house was built does not provide significant

information about the house, since we know that all houses are built. This observation

raises the very important question of the contribution made to the determination of

obligatoriness by pragmatic factors, which obviously have nothing to do with clause

14
structure.14 Thus if one measures obligatoriness by the yardstick of the speaker’s

communicative intention, the locative prepositional phrase at church is probably the

whole point of what the speaker wanted to say in uttering Mary met Joe at church. In

virtue of what principle can it be treated as optional? The ultimate idea behind the

adjunct/complement distinction seems to be that the latter are essential participants in

the verbal event, called for by the very nature of the predicate,15 while the former are

accidental circumstances. However, it is questionable whether one can determine

essentialness versus accidentalness outside of a context: thus, for example, the verb

tell is usually treated as a three-place predicate involving an agent, a patient, and an

addressee; however in a use such as (5) there are but two arguments and there is no

feeling that the other has been ellipted:

Mis en forme : EXT

(5) The author tells the story using the third person.
Mis en forme : EXT

Two syntactic characteristics have been argued to distinguish adjuncts from

complements: mobility and stackability (Aarts 2011: 105). Stackability concerns the

possibility of having more than one adjunct in a clause (Yesterday the sun was just as

it is in India). This is not distinctive of adjuncts, however, as one can also have two

complements functioning as object in the same clause (I sold [Gabriel]1 [my car]2 for Commenté [B5]: AQ: should this read 'objects'?
Commenté [PD6R5]: Yes.

14
The fact that one could accept This house was built in a fairy-tale, as in This house was built, but that

one just appeared out of nowhere, serves to confirm the importance of pragmatic considerations for

this question.

15
The technical term for this dependency of complements on predicates is ‘licencing’ (see

Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 219); the predicate eat is inconceivable without something

being eaten and so licences a direct object complement.

15
$2500).16. As regards mobility, complements can also sometimes occupy different

positions within the clause (I don’t need advice/Advice I don’t need), although there is

less freedom in this respect than with adjuncts. Some authors hold therefore that no

diagnostic criteria have emerged that will reliably distinguish adjuncts from

complements in all cases, e.g., Dowty (2003: 33).

As regards the semantic structure of the clause, one may well wonder what the

optional or obligatory character of one of its components tells us about the relation

between this component and the rest. The idea behind the complement/adjunct

distinction is that a complement is required in order to complete the meaning of its

head, without which the latter would be incoherent, while an adjunct merely adds a

further characterization to its head, restricting the latter to a proper subset of its

denotation (see Dowty 2003: 34). Thus unleavened bread is a subset of bread, but the

latter is perfectly conceivable without the adjunct if one wishes to refer to the whole

category, whereas *they destroyed seems incomplete all by itself and calls for the

specification of some object that underwent the destruction expressed by the verb.

However, in the NP extremely heavy rocks the adverb extremely denotes a subset of

heavy and so qualifies as an adjunct, and yet one would not want to equate the

semantic relation between the adverb extremely and the adjective heavy with that

16
One might argue here that ‘complement’ is merely an umbrella term denoting very different

grammatical functions and that direct and indirect objects do not have the same

grammatical function whereas all adjuncts do. This opens up the debate about what

distinctions exist within the categories of complements and adjuncts themselves.

Unfortunately, space does not allow this issue to be addressed here. Suffice it to say that

from the semantic point of view there is just as much difference between a temporal and a

purposive adjunct as between a direct and an indirect object.

16
between the adjective heavy itself and the noun rock just because both denote a subset

of their head (for instance, extremely denotes the way heavy applies to the rocks, but

heavy does not denote the way the rocks are rocks). Even less would one want to

semantically equate the ‘adjective-noun’ relation between the adjunct unleavened and

bread to the ‘circumstantial-verb’ relation between slept and on the couch in He slept

on the couch. Thus while the distinction between complements and adjuncts is

definitely of interest to a constituency grammar, as it indicates which constituents are

required in the structure, it is much less relevant to a dependency grammar. While

obligatoriness may be an indication that certain elements require the presence of the

compulsory component, the question remains as to exactly how and why an

obligatory component is obligatory.

17.4 Is there a hierarchy of complements?

The term ‘complement’ is also sometimes used in a more restricted sense to refer only

to core arguments of main predicates (see Dixon and Aikhenvald 2006: 1; Achard

2007: 782–783). In this view, the presence of the preposition to in a sentence such as

He alluded to her letter disqualifies the phrase it introduces from being a

complement.17 Here one of the most important tasks has been motivating the

distribution of complement forms with respect to the main verbs with which they

occur. Talmy Givón (1980, 2001b) has made an influential proposal of a hierarchy of

17
When there is no preposition, the noun phrase following the verb is considered a

complement, as is the direct object her letter in He mentioned her letter.

17
complements,18 which claims a correlation between the morphosyntactic

independence of the complement and the conceptual distance between its event and

that denoted by the matrix verb. In English, Givón’s scale of event integration places

deverbal nouns above the gerund-participle, and the latter above the to-infinitive, with

finite subordinate clauses representing a lower degree of verb-complement binding

(Givón 2001b: 68–69):

Mis en forme : EXT

(6a) a. She did her work.

(6b) b. She started working.
(6c) c. She longed to work.
(6d) d. She said that she works.
Mis en forme : EXT

There are significant problems with this proposal. Firstly, the distinguishability of the

different ranks on the scale is called into question by the fact that certain verbs are

construable with more than one complement construction with no significant change

in communicative import:

Mis en forme : EXT

(7a) a. I recommend buying a new printer.

(7b) b. I recommend that you buy a new printer.
Mis en forme : EXT

Furthermore, as far as the control relation between the subject of the main verb and

the complement is concerned, the scale runs in exactly the opposite direction to that

proposed by Givón: from to-infinitive → gerund-participle → deverbal noun (Duffley

2014: 149–150). The to-infinitive manifests the highest degree of integration,

18
To cite just a few studies that refer to Givón’s binding hierarchy, see Foley and VanValin

(1984), Cristofaro (2003), Hollmann (2010), and Kaleta (2016).

18
showing practically exclusive subject control readings, with its subject being nearly

always identical to that of the main verb (e.g., He likes to control/He needs to

control). The gerund-participle, for its part, varies between subject and non-subject

interpretations with different matrix verbs (e.g., He likes controlling/He needs

controlling). The deverbal noun is indifferent to control and often allows both

readings with the very same matrix verb (He needs control could mean either ‘he

needs to exercise control’ or ‘he needs to be kept under control’).

Givón also proposes a correlation between complement form and temporal

integration. Thus the bare infinitive has no semiological material intervening between

it and the main verb, and disallows temporal dislocation between the matrix and the

complement, while the to-infinitive, which has greater syntactic distance between the

matrix verb and the infinitive due to the interpolation of to, does not:

Mis en forme : EXT

(8a) a. *Yesterday she made him shave today.

(8b) b. Yesterday she asked him to shave today. (Givón 2001b: 45)
Mis en forme : EXT

The reality of complement usage is more complex than this, however, as the verb

force is like make in not admitting temporal dislocation, but is construed nonetheless

with the to-infinitive:

Mis en forme : EXT

(8c) *Yesterday she forced him to shave today.

Mis en forme : EXT

Moreover, temporal integration does not correlate very well with the purported

deverbal noun– — gerund-participle– — to-infinitive scale. Both the deverbal noun

and the gerund-participle’s events can be dislocated either towards the future or

towards the past with respect to the matrix:

19
 Mis en forme : EXT

(9a) a. I anticipate losing some money on this deal/a net loss on this deal.
(9b) b. I regret making a mistake in your address/the mistake in your address.
Mis en forme : EXT

In addition, the to-infinitive can be temporally contiguous to the main verb’s event:

Mis en forme : EXT

(10) I chanced to meet an old friend at the airport yesterday.

Mis en forme : EXT

Furthermore, Givón (2001b: 59) places perception verbs considerably lower on the

scale of event integration than manipulation verbs such as make. Semantically,

however, both involve temporal integration, and syntactically both are construed with

the bare infinitive:

Mis en forme : EXT

(11a) a. *Yesterday she made him shave today.

(11b) b. *Yesterday she saw him shave today.
Mis en forme : EXT

On what basis are they placed on opposite ends of the scale of semantic binding

between matrix and complement verbs? And if they are so different semantically, why

are both construed with the very same complement form? The identity of syntactic

construction is explained in Duffley (1992: 29–30, 65–66), who argues that in I saw

Joe cross the street the perception cannot be conceived as existing prior to the action

perceived; similarly, since in I made Joe open the door the verb make denotes the

effective production of an effect, the producer of the effect cannot be conceived as

effectively producing the effect of Joe opening the door prior to the realization of the

action of Joe opening the door.

20
 Further problems are raised by Givón’s treatment of the ‘manipulation verbs’

make and have (2001b: 47). Based on the contrast between (12a) and (12b), he argues

that make is a ‘direct manipulation verb’ whereas have involves ‘indirect

manipulation’:

Mis en forme : EXT

(12a) a. *He wasn’t in the room when she entered, so she made him come in.
(12b) b. He wasn’t in the room when she entered, so she had him come in.
(Givón 2001b: 45)
Mis en forme : EXT

Contrary to Givón’s claims, however, make does not always imply “direct contact

between the manipulator and the manipulee”:

Mis en forme : EXT

(13) Unfortunately several of bin Laden’s top lieutenants did escape our military in
Iraq and Afghanistan and we’ve never found them. One of them was Osama’s
right hand man, a cunning and ruthless murderer named Dr Fahad Manjikian.
He makes bin Laden look like a Boy Scout leader.
(https://books.google.ca/books?isbn=1479704539) Commenté [B7]: AQ: I was unable to access this link;
please check.
Commenté [PD8R7]: You could use the reference to the
book: Cauthen, John V. 2012, Chasing the wind. Exlibris
Here the idea is simply that of the effect produced on the image one has of bin Laden (ebook), p. 29.
Mis en forme : EXT
by the comparison between him and Dr Manjikian. Moreover, have does not always

involve an intermediary:

Mis en forme : EXT

(14) The teacher had me recite my poem in front of the class.

Mis en forme : EXT

The idea signified by this verb is simply that of ‘having someone under one’s control

in the production of an effect’ (Duffley 1992: 72), which explains why there is an

assumption of compliance, either because of an authority-relation between the actants

or because the action requested is so trivial that compliance can be taken for granted

21
(e.g., She had me take a seat). This also explains why there is no impression of

subsequence between the having and the complement event, and consequently no to

before the infinitive.

All this points to the complexity of the inner workings of clause structure in

English. Abstract scales such as Givón’s binding hierarchy do reflect the semantic and

syntactic configurations of complement constructions to some degree. But in order to

tease apart the intricate articulations of complement constructions, an accurate view

of what each of the components of such constructions means and how its meaning fits

together with those of its clause-mates is requisite.

17.5. Subcategorization and complementation

In generative approaches, the question of the distribution of complement forms with

different predicates is handled by means of subcategorization rules, with verbs being

classified according to the type of complementation they take (Huddleston and

Pullum 2002: 219–220). Verbs that take no object complements are classified as

intransitive (I left), while verbs with one or two objects are classified as

monotransitive (I took the car) or ditransitive (Dad gave me the keys).

Subcategorization often involves determination of the form of complement that is

licenced. This occurs with the verbs mention and allude, where the first licences a

direct object (She mentioned the problem) while the second requires a prepositional

phrase with to (She alluded to the problem). Subcategorization frames can also be

observed with nonfinite verbal complements: thus the verb want licenses only the to-

infinitive, enjoy only the gerund-participle, and like both the to-infinitive and the

gerund-participle.

22
 The subcategorization approach raises a certain number of questions, however.

Are subcategorization features merely syntactic tags attached to items in the lexicon,

or does the meaning of the verb play a role in determining what sort of

complementation it can take? Regarding verbs such as like, which admit more than

one type of complement, is this a mere syntactic fact about this lexical item or does it

correlate with a distinction on the level of meaning? Does the term ‘complement’

itself correspond to any stable semantic category?

Regarding the first question of whether the meaning of the main verb plays a role

in determining what sort of complementation it occurs with, it has been argued by a

number of authors that the to-infinitive is associated with a specific type of meaning

which has been described by the notions of “hypothesis” (Bolinger 1978b: 10), “mere

potentiality for action” (Quirk et al. 1985: 1191), and “futurity” (Wierzbicka 1988:

188). In the light of the full range of infinitival usage, Duffley (1992: 89) broadens

this description so as to cover cases such as She managed to open the door, proposing

that the notion of movement expressed by to leading from the matrix verb’s event to

the infinitive’s entails that the latter is represented as somehow subsequent to the

former. This relation can take the form either of ‘subsequent potentiality’, as in She

tried to open the door, where the infinitive’s event is understood to be future and

unrealized, or of ‘subsequent actualization’, as in the sentence with manage above in

which the managing of the situation is construed as leading to the realization of

opening the door. In certain cases the subsequence holds exclusively between ideas in

the mind, as in The wall appears to be crooked, where the meaning of to applies to the

relation between appearances and what the latter indicate as probably being the case,

with the appearance of the wall being construed as leading to the attribution of

23
crookedness to it. (Note the existence of motion/direction metaphors with other

expressions in this notional domain, e.g., All the evidence points to a cover-up.)19

These observations concerning the meaning of the to-infinitive lead us to agree

with Huddleston and Pullum’s (2002: 1240) conclusion that infinitival and gerundive

complement selection is “not random,”, as there is always some form of subsequence

involved in uses of the to-infinitive. Paradoxically, however, these authors go on

immediately thereafter to state that “which form-type(s) a particular catenative20

selects must be specified lexically for that verb: we cannot assign distinct meanings to

the form-types and treat the selection as semantically determined.”. While it has been

shown above that this statement is not accurate with respect to the infinitive, whose

meaning gives it a natural affinity for prospectively-oriented predicates, we will now

see that it does apply to some degree to the gerund-participle.

There is a long tradition in English grammar of treating the gerund-participle as

an imperfective denoting an event in progress that is only partially realized at some

reference point (Kruisinga 1931: 259; Freed 1979: 72–73; Hewson and Bubenik 1997:
19
This purely notional form of subsequence is also discernible in uses such as:
Commenté [B9]: AQ: this ref appears to be missing from
the biblio. Please check.
Commenté [PD10R9]: Here is the reference: Kruisinga,
Etsko. 1931. A Handbook of Present-Day English, Part II.
English Accidence and Syntax, vol. 1, 5th ed. Groningen:
P. Noordhoff.

i) Max is known to have a criminal record. Mis en forme : EXT

ii) Max used to go to church.

iii) Max happened to show up at the same bar I was at.

In (i), knowledge allows Max to be connected to the possession of a criminal record; in (ii)

going to church is conceived as a product of habit; in (iii) showing up at the same bar that

the speaker was at is construed as a result of chance.

20
This term designates a verb that takes as a complement another verb, the latter being

usually in the infinitive or gerundive form.

24
5–6; Hirtle 2007a: 61–62; Egan 2008: 129). When put into relation with another

event, imperfectivity necessarily implies simultaneity, as can be seen in:

Mis en forme : EXT

(15) I enjoyed chatting with you.

Mis en forme : EXT

This is explicitly stated by Wierzbicka (1988: 62), who speaks of “sameness of time”

in such uses. However, Wierzbicka also recognizes a “non-temporal” category of

gerund-participles that refer to “facts” for which “simultaneity is not pertinent,”, an

example being (16):

Mis en forme : EXT

(16) I regret quarreling with Mary.

Mis en forme : EXT

Another cognitive grammarian, Hamawand (2002: 100), defines the -ing form of the

verb as denoting “ungrounded ongoingness” and places uses such as (28) under this

umbrella in the subcategory “anteriority” alongside the sister subcategory

“simultaneity”, not realizing that there is a flat contradiction between simultaneity and

anteriority. The situation is further complexified when one considers uses such as

(17):

Mis en forme : EXT

(17) I recommend accepting the offer.

Mis en forme : EXT

Here the event denoted by the gerund-participle is understood to be future with

respect to that of the main verb.

The actual reality of the gerund-participle’s use as a complement is simply that it

denotes its event as an interiorly homogenous entity construed as the direct object of

25
the main verb (Duffley 2006: 36–37). Thus an action which is enjoyed will be

understood to produce pleasure during its realization; an action which is regretted will

be understood to have taken place before the feeling of regret of which it is the cause;

and an action which is recommended will be understood to be unrealized at the

moment of the recommending. In other words, any temporal relation between the

gerund-participle’s and the matrix verb’s event is an inference based on the meaning

of the matrix verb and the fact that the gerund-participle represents ‘that which is

verb-ed’. Some matrix verbs even imply no particular temporal relation with their

complement:

Mis en forme : EXT

(18) Is there any specific word to describe walking the same path from one place to
another? (english.stackexchange.com)
Mis en forme : EXT

Since any verb that makes sense with a direct object denoting an event can be

construed with an -ing complement, it is impossible to tie the selection of the gerund-

participle to any specific type of semantic content in the matrix. Huddleston and

Pullum (2002) are thus vindicated for the gerund-participle, but not for the to-

infinitive.

Regarding the second issue of verbs such as like which admit more than one type

of complement, the difference in complementation correlates with a subtle but real

distinction on the level of meaning which can be observed in minimal pairs such as:

Mis en forme : EXT

(19a) a. I like to finish work at 4:00.

(19b) b. I like finishing work at 4:00.
(20a) a. I tried to push the red button.
(20b) b. I tried pushing the red button.
(21a) a. When she woke up, she remembered to phone him.
(21b) b. When she woke up, she remembered phoning him.

26
 Mis en forme : EXT

These show that like can be construed either as a positive disposition leading the liker

to try to achieve a goal (19a), or as a positive feeling derived from some action that

the liker is performing on a regular basis (19b). Similarly, try can be construed either

as the (unsuccessful) implementation of certain means aimed at pushing a button, or

as the implementation of the action of pushing a button as a means of getting a

machine to stop. And remembering can be taken either as a trigger leading to action

(21a) or as the recalling of some action performed in the past (21b). It is interesting to

note that the more basic notion of remembering, which refers to the simple fact of

something surfacing or being present in memory, allows a construal as a mere trigger

for action, whereas the notion of recalling, which involves calling something back

into memory, does not:

Mis en forme : EXT

(22) *When she woke up, she recalled to phone him.

Mis en forme : EXT

This illustrates the fact that pinpointing the precise reason why some verbs admit

more than one type of complementation, while others do not, requires careful research

into the semantics of each particular verb.

As for the final question of whether the term ‘complement’ itself corresponds to

any semantic category, the answer is unfortunately negative. The above discussion

shows that the relation of to-infinitive complements to the main verb is very different

from that of gerund-participle complements. The latter have the function of direct

object denoting ‘that which is verb-ed’, and any temporal relation they are felt to have

with the matrix is an inference based on the interaction between this function and the

lexical content of the main verb. The to-infinitive, on the other hand, is related to the

27
 matrix by the meaning of the preposition to, which places it in some form of

subsequence with respect to the main verb’s event. The term ‘complement’ covers

both of these forms, whose semantic relationship to the matrix verb is significantly

different.

17.6. Conclusion

This chapter has covered the topic of clause structure from a range of different angles.

The definition of ‘head’ has been examined and the various approaches to clause

structure taken by constituency and dependency grammars presented. For modern

constituency grammar, the basic structure of the finite clause is binary, with the cut

being made between NP and I′. Dependency grammar comes in two varieties, the

traditional one in which there is a binary division between subject and predicate, and

the valency model that represents the clause as a constellation of elements all

dependent on the verb. The question of double dependencies has also been raised in

this chapter, and a meaning-based analysis of constructions containing raising and

control verbs was proposed. The difference between complements and adjuncts has

been discussed and important points regarding licencing and optionality and their

relationship to semantics and pragmatics have been made. Givon’s influential binding

hierarchy of complements has been critiqued, covering concepts such as control,

temporal integration and intentionality, and providing detailed analyses of perception

and manipulation verbs. The final section has dealt with subcategorization, showing

that the meaning of the main verb plays a crucial role in determining the type of

complementation it is compatible with, and that verbs which allow more than one

type of complement do so because of a distinction on the level of meaning.

28

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