A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

§ 1 Introduction 65

Some verbs allow or require not only an object but also some other phrase. For
example, give allows an object and a preposition phrase (PP) with the preposition to
as head, so we have clauses like Lucy gave the key to the landlord, where the NP the
key is an object and the PP to the landlord is also included in the VP. We show the
structure of that clause in [2], again without bothering to show details of the inter­
nal structure of the NPs or the PP.

[2] Clause

Subject: Predicate:

NP VP

Predicator: Object: Complement:

V NP PP

I D �

Lucy gave the key to the landlord

The important point to note is that in order to tell whether some object or comple­
ment is allowed in a clause, you have to know what specific verb is serving as the
predicator of the clause.

Complements and adjuncts

The dependents of the predicator in the VP are of two main kinds: complements
and adjuncts. The admissibility of a complement depends on the predicator belong­
ing to a particular subclass of verbs. The term we use for this is licensing: comple­
ments have to be licensed by their head.
The object is one kind of complement, and we can illustrate the concept of licens­
ing by considering the occurrence of an object with the three verbs shown in [3]:
[3] a. Sue used the cheese.
ii a. Sue ate the cheese.
111 a. * Sue disappeared the cheese.

b. * Sue used.

b. Sue ate.

b. Sue disappeared.

[object obligatory]

[object optional]

[object excluded]

An object such as the cheese is admissible with, hence licensed by, the verbs use
and eat, but not disappear: [iiia] is ungrammatical, as is any other clause with dis­
appear as head and an object as dependent. There is a further difference between
use and eat. With eat the object is optional whereas with use it is obligatory: [iib] is
grammatical, but rib] is not. The status of a dependent as a complement is most
obvious when it is obligatory for at least some heads. But this is not essential: the
crucial feature of licensing is that the admissibility of the element depends on the
presence of an appropriate head.
The occurrence of adjuncts is not restricted in this way. They occur more freely,
essentially without regard to what the predicator is.