A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

66 Chapter 4 Clause structure, complements and adjuncts

The examples in [4] illustrate the difference between complements (marked by

double underlining) and adjuncts (single underlining).

[4] i The box was useless because it had a hole in it.

ii I saw your fa ther this morning.

iii They still think they were right.

In [i], useless (an adjective phrase, or AdjP) is a complement, since it has to be

licensed by the predicator. Again this can be shown by replacing be with a verb

such as leak, which gives us the ungrammatical *The box leaked useless because

it had a hole in it.

On the other hand, because it had a hole in it is an adjunct in [i]. We cannot find

two different subclasses of verb that differ in whether they accept a because

phrase as dependent. The box leaked because it had a hole in it, for example, is

just as grammatical as [4i]. It doesn't make sense, of course, to say #She spoke

excellent French because it had a hole in it, but that is due to the semantic con­

tent of this particular because phrase. She spoke excellent French because she

had spent a year in Paris as a student is clearly impeccable. Licensing is a matter

of grammar, and when we test by making replacements we have to be prepared

to make adjustments of this kind to the semantic content. There are no verbs that

exclude because phrases in general.

In [ii], your fa ther is a complement licensed by see. If see were replaced by fall,

say, we would have an ungrammatical sentence. This morning in [ii], by contrast,

is an adjunct; a temporal NP of this kind is compatible with any verb.

In [iii], still is an adjunct, again because it is compatible with any verb. But the

subordinate clause they were right is a complement, licensed by think. Again it

is easy to find verbs like alter or lose or work that are incompatible with a sub­

ordinate clause of this kind, whatever its particular semantic content.

The subject as a kind of complement

We have shown that the object is a kind of complement since it satisfies the licens­
ing requirement. The subject is rather different: all canonical clauses contain a sub­
ject, so in a sense subjects are compatible with any verb. However, certain syntactic
kinds of subject are restricted to occurrence with particular kinds of verb, so the
concept of licensing applies here too. Take, for example, the subject of [Si]:

[5] i Whether we will finish on time depends primarily on the weather.

ii *Whether we will finish on time ruined the afternoon.

The underlined expression in [Si] is a subordinate clause functioning as subject of

the larger clause that forms the whole sentence. It is, more specifically, a subordi­

nate interrogative clause: the main clause counterpart is Will we finish on time?

A subject of this syntactic form has to be licensed by the verb (or VP). It is admissi­

ble with depend, but there are innumerable other verbs such as ruin, see,

think, yearn, etc., that do not accept subjects of this form; so [Sii], for example, is

ungrammatical.