The Complement
Linguistics 222
Introduction to Syntax
Complements are arguments of the head of a phrase.
Semantically, arguments are logical extensions of the meaning
of the head. These extensions are often called 'participants';
in logic, 'arguments.' Although subjects are often arguments of
the head, they occur in a different syntactic position from complements.
Complements are closely bound to the head. In the following sentences
the first complement is marked in blue and a complmenet within
a complement is marked in red:
Both Sally and 'a book' are arguments of read. The verb requires that someone do the reading, and that something be read. A book is the complement of read. Together they form a verb phrase.
Virtually all heads may have
a complement. The complement of an adjective may be a prepositional
phrase:
'For peace' is a complement of 'for'. The adjective ready requires two arguments: the experiencer of being ready, that thing or person that one is ready for. The latter argument functions as a complement with the adjective. The former is in some sense the subject of it
Prepositions may also take complements. In sentence (2) the preposition for implies something: ready for something. Whatever it is, the phrase is an extension of the meaning of for.
The stnadard interpretation of the following NPs is that the noun also take complements. The complement is often a PP and the head of the P is often of:
The PP of cookiesis the complement of box, and colours is the complement of the prepositon of. This holds through the above examples. The NP glass of milk is constructed:
The above moving diagram is no longer considered to be correct.
Considering 'of' to be a head with a complement is now considered to be wrong.
First, there are two kinds of prepositions. The first kind have meaning and usually denote space or time relations, and some an abstract meaning hard to categorize: on, over, under, in, out, away, to, toward, next to, beside, through, about plus a few others. These prepositions take true arguments which are realized as complements in the syntax. For example:
on the table
ON <THE TABLE>
ON is a head which implies 'on something'. 'TABLE' doesn't imply onness, but it is dependent on it. This holds for all the above mentioned prepositions.
One of the prepositions in English that doesn't have inherent meaning; it may be a head, but it takes no arguments. It has a grammatical function, but this function is reserved for intermediate syntax. In older English 'of' did have meaning: it usually meant 'from' as in the Xmas carol:
We three Kings of Orient are.
Here, 'of' means 'from.' The preposition 'from' has fairly well replaced 'of' in this meaning in most modern English dialects.
There are two distinct constructions which include the modern use of "of". In one case, the first noun is a head, takes a complement, and forms a projection (Projection of X):
The top of the table is brown.
Here, 'brown' is modifying 'top', not 'table' directly. The rest of the table could be some other colour. The partial logical structure is:
BROWN <THE TOP <(of) THE TABLE>>.
THE TOP <(of) THE TABLE is the argument of BROWN, and THE TABLE is the argument of TOP. TOP is an object which is brown. "of" has no meaning and is not pat of the logical structure.
Let's take another example:
The colour of the car has faded.
It is the colour that has faded, not the car. 'Colour' is the head in that it is what has faded. The logical structure of the above is the following:
FADE <THE COLOUR <(of) THE CAR>>
It is the colour of the car that has faded, not the car itself.
'Car' is simply its complement:
Note that the indices mark the projection of the head noun ().
The second distinct construction includes the class of nouns that we may call 'cointainer' nouns. there may be other nouns in this class, but let us focus on these:
Mary drank a cup of tea.
We are interested in the NP 'a cup of tea'. First, from a semantic point of view, what Mary drank was tea, not the cup:
Mary drank (some) tea.
*Mary drank a cup.
*Mary drank a cup which contained some tea.
Logically, 'tea' should be the head of the projection of the complement of 'drink'. 'Of' has no meaning here. If a word has no meaning, then it cannot function as a head with a complement. A complement is a logical argument of the head. The function of 'cup' is much more interesting. 'Cup' is a head as it has meaning. It implies 'tea' or some liquid--Mary can't drink just the cup. Tea' does not imply 'cup' or a containder as 'tea' can exist outisde of a container. In this sense, 'tea' is the complement of 'cup'. However, there exists another function between 'cup' and 'tea'. 'Cup' is a container that delimits or modifies 'tea'. In the kind of set theory we have been using here, 'cup' delimits 'tea' to that set of tea that occurs in a cup. The partial logical structure of 'Mary drank a cup of tea' is:
DRINK <TEA> <MARY>.
DRINK has two arguments. TEA is modified by A CUP:
< A CUP <(of) TEA>>,
CUP is modified by "a":
< A <CUP>>.
If we combine the arguments we get a string that is hard to read:
<DRINK <<A <CUP>> <TEA>> <MARY>>.
For this reason, complex structure are shown in tree structure form rather than in linear form as above.
The object of interest here is 'tea'; it is projected up to the upper NP:
All modifiers have this property. They take arguments and at the same time they modify the argument. Objects and eventualities cannot do this. There are various kinds of nouns. Containers can be nouns that to an object:
The cup broke.
Or they can refer to a relation (a state) that modifies an object:
Alice sipped a bottle of mineral water.
In this sense, nouns can be modifiers. They must have a certain function, such as container in the above examples.
Contents: Complements | Head and Complement
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This page last updated 1 FE 2000
