Delahunty and Garvey
The simple present version of (70b), She runs marathons, implies multiple
individual marathon-running events. Note the plural, marathons.
Verbs allow or select complements of various syntactic forms. For instance,
when wait is transitive, its complement may be either an NP (e.g., Wait your
turn!) or a PP (e.g., We’ll wait for the next bus). Anyone learning the language
must learn the restrictions and possibilities associated with verbs.
Exercise
Using (a) as a guide, identify and distinguish the various objects and
complements in the following sentences. Be sure to identify the entire
object/complement expression in each instance.
a. The people elected Oscar (Direct Object) poet laureate (Object
Complement).
b. She must be really intelligent.
c. Her daughter became a famous scientist.
d. Fred smokes cigarillos.
e. The students gave the new teacher a welcome gift.
f. The class named Rodriguez “classmate most likely to succeed.”
g. Many people believe that James Joyce was the greatest novelist
of the 20th century.
VP: head + modifier(s)
To distinguish them from modifiers of nouns, modifiers of verbs often have
special names such as adverbial. The most frequent modifiers come in only
four formal types, as indicated in Table 9.
type of modifier example
Adverb phrase We left early.
Prepositional phrase We stayed in Helsinki.
Adverbial clause We left after it started to snow.
Noun phrase We enjoyed it a great deal.
table 9: modifiers of verbs
Adverbial clauses begin with the subordinating adverbial conjunctions
mentioned in the chapter on Minor Parts of Speech.
Like single adverbs, the phrasal and clausal modifiers are somewhat mov-
able in the sentence: