Verb complement

verb + that-complement

  1. Descriptions
    • Verbs controlling that-clauses are categorized into three domains (p. 661):
      • Mental verbs: Pertaining to cognition and often including emotive/affective content (e.g., hope, believe, feel, find, guess, know, see, think, assume, conclude).
      • Speech act verbs: Specifically denote speech activities (e.g., say, admit, agree, announce, argue, bet, insist).
      • Other communication verbs: May not directly involve speech (e.g., show, suggest, ensure, indicate, prove).
  2. Tag
    • thatcls+vcomp (including a ZERO complementizer) is tagged to the main verb within the that-complement clause.
  3. Examples
    • I didn’t agree that he should be compelled to do singing. (p. 661)
    • I suggested that she sit down on the chair and wait. (p. 662)
    • I would hope that we can have more control over them.
    • I propose that Mary should be invited. (Haegeman & Guéron, 1998, p. 441)
  4. Discussions
    • It seems that he brought that cup to his house.
    • Q: How do we tag extraposing verbs?
    • Q: Should we include if/wether-complement clause here? or into the next category?

verb + wh-complement

  1. Descriptions
    • wh-clauses can be either dependent (1) interrogative clauses or (2) nominal relative clauses (p. 683).
    • Common wh-words: what, who, where, when, why, how, and whether
    • Types:
      • Interrogative clauses: Used with verbs like ask and wonder to present indirect questions.
        • e.g., I wonder what that could be about.
      • Nominal relative clauses: Can be paraphrased by a general head noun modified by the wh-clause (e.g., Whoever solves this problem will be successful. → The person who solves this problem will be successful.)
        • e.g., What baffles me is how few of them can spell.
  2. Tag
    • whcls+vcomp is tagged on the main verb of the wh-complement clause.
  3. Examples
    • I don’t know how they do it.
    • She showed me where we should plant the tree.
    • He described what he saw at the event.
    • No one knows how long the journey will take.
    • “What I don’t understand,” she said, “is why they don’t let me know anything.” (p. 193)
    • that’s how I did it. (dataset)

Complements

Complements are often required to form a grammatically complete and meaningful sentence. Consider the following examples, where grammatically incorrect sentences are indicated with * (Haegeman & Guéron, 1998, pp. 21-22):

  • a. He abandoned the project.
  • b. *He abandoned.
  • c. *He abandoned after the project.
  • d. He abandoned the book.
  • e. He abandoned the project, then the book.

These examples show that the verb abandon must be followed by a noun phrase (e.g., the project). If the verb is not accompanied by a noun phrase, the sentence is incomplete and therefore ungrammatical (as seen in examples b and c).

Verb complement clauses

Verb complement clauses are dependent clauses that serve to complete the meaning of a verb in a main clause (e.g., I think that this doc looks good; that-clause functions a complement to the verb think). These clauses are also called nominal clauses because they frequently occupy a noun phrase slot in the sentence, acting as subjects, objects, or predicatives. Depending on the controlling predicate, they can be found in both pre-predicate (subject) and post-predicate (e.g., direct object) positions (For more information, see Chapter 9).

However, complement clauses can also complete the meaning of an adjectival predicate rather than a verb in the main clause (e.g., I’ve gotta be careful that I don’t sound too formal). Here, the term predicate refers to both lexical verbs and copula+adjective combinations capable of governing a complement clause. This aspect will be further explored in the section on adjective complement.

There are four types of verb complement clauses: (1) that-clause, (2) wh-clause, (3) to-infinitive clause, and (4) ing-clause. In this section, (1) and (2) are discussed because they are finite clauses, while (3) and (4) will be discussed in the section on non-finite clause verb complements.