A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

78 Chapter 4 Clause structure, complements and adjuncts

major structures for canonical clauses on the basis of which internal complements
are present:

[29] NAME

ORDINARY INTRANSITIVE

ii COMPLEX-INTRANSITIVE

iii ORDINARY MONOTRANSITIVE

iv COMPLEX-TRANSITIVE

V DITRANSITIVE

STRUCTURE

S-p

S-P-PC

S-p-Od

S-p-Od_PC

S_p_Oi_Od

EXAMPLE

We hesitated.

We fe lt happy.

We sold our house.

We made them happy.

We gave them some fo od.

There are two partially independent dimensions of contrast involved here: whether
there are objects (and, if so, how many), and whether there are predicative
complements.

The dimension that relates to the number of objects in the clause is called tran­

sitivity. An intransitive clause has no objects, a monotransitive clause has one

object, and a ditransitive clause has two objects, indirect and direct. In canoni­

cal clauses an indirect object cannot occur without a following direct one, so the

single object of a monotransitive is always a direct object.

The other dimension concerns the presence or absence of a predicative comple­

ment. We give compound names to clauses containing a predicative complement:

complex-intransitive for an intransitive one and complex-transitive for a tran­

sitive one. Those without predicative complements are ordinary intransitives

and transitives, but since the compound names are used when the clause is not

ordinary, we can nonnally omit the word 'ordinary'.

The labels apply to clause, verb phrase, and verb alike: We hesitated is an intransi­
tive clause, hesitated is an intransitive VP, and hesitate is an intransitive verb. It
should be borne in mind, however, that most verbs occur in more than one of the
clause constructions. For example, make occurs in monotransitive clauses (We
made lunch) and ditransitive clauses (We made them lunch) as well as complex­
transitive clauses, like [29iv]. When the tenns are used for verbs, therefore, they
typically apply to particular USES of the verbs.
This concludes our discussion of complements for this chapter. There are other
kinds besides those we have examined - notably complements with the fonn of PPs
or subordinate clauses - but these are best dealt with in the chapters dealing with
those categories: see Ch. 7, §7, for complements with the fonn of PPs, Ch. 10 for
finite subordinate clauses, and Ch. 13, §§3-4, for non-finite subordinate clauses.

6 Adjuncts

The crucial distinction between complements and adjuncts is that the for­
mer have to be licensed by the particular head verb whereas adjuncts do not.
Adjuncts are thus less closely dependent on the verb, and their occurrence is in gen­
eral less constrained by grammatical rules. There is a great range of different kinds
of adjunct, and we have space here only to deal with them very summarily.