X

VERB COMPLEMENTS

The thought imposes its form upon the sentence.-WISELY Complements which must be added to make the predicate complete are to be carefully distinguished from words that may be added to make the meaning more precise.—BUEHLER.

Now, my dear James, if I have succeeded in making clear to you the principle out of which the use of these words. has arisen, I have accomplished a good deal.—COBBETT'S GRAMMAR (1818).

The three fundamental types of predicate construction may be illustrated as follows:

1. Dogs bark.

2. The child seems happy.

3. John has cut his finger.

In the first all the essential elements of the predicate are in the verb itself. Other words may be added but they are simply modifiers and not necessary to the sentence construction.

In the second and third sentences the verbs cannot be used as predicates without the completing word or "complement"; such verbs are sometimes loosely classed together as "verbs of incomplete predication." But the two types differ essentially both in the character of the verb itself and in the nature and relations of the complement.

In the second sentence the verb "seems," though not without some attributive idea, is chiefly a connective or copula for the outside attribute "happy." Such a verb is called a "copulative verb," and the verbs which are most frequently used in copulative relations are be, become, seem, appear, taste, smell, look, feel, and a few others. There are also a large number of passive verb phrases which (although they contain in themselves a kind of copula and attribute) are yet used as copulas for an outside term which is the real attribute of the sentence. Such are "is made," "is chosen," is thought," etc., as, "Washington was elected President of the United States."

Attribute complements are of many kinds. Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, participles, infinitive phrases, and clauses, may all be used in this relation, as follows:

He is a man.

This is he.

She seems happy.

He was greatly admired.

This is to be deplored.

The fact is that it is impossible.

The attribute complement is always subjective in character. If it is a noun or pronoun it means the same thing as the subject. If it is an adjective, it expresses a quality or attribute of this thing.

In the first and third types of predicate, the verbs bark and has cut alike contain the copula and the chief part of the idea to be predicated. But bark is a complete verb. Has cut differs from bark in being also

transitive; that is, it expresses an action which is carried over from the doer to a passive recipient that must also be named in order that the meaning shall be complete. "true

Some grammarians distinguish between a intransitive verb," by which they mean one that never takes an object, and a "transitive verb used absolutely;" that is, one usually transitive but used in a given case without an object. But grammatical classification is according to the function of a word in the sentenec where it occurs. The omission of the object changes slightly the character of the verb itself, making it more general in meaning. It seems most logical to follow the classification made by those grammarians who would call all the verbs intransitive in such a sentence as "The man eats, laughs, and sleeps." A verb usually intransitive may also be made transitive with an object of kindred signification called the "cognate object," as "He laughed a loud laugh.'

The complement of a transitive verb is always objective in character. After a reflexive verb, as "I hurt myself," it means the same thing as the subject, but this is still thought of as outside and objective. The object complement ranks higher than the adverbial modifier since it is necessary to the predicate construction.

All verb complements belong to the basic part of the sentence. The subject, verb, and complement are all needed to make the sentence structure complete.

Object complements as well as attributes, vary greatly, and the different types of objects will be considered later.

Both object and attribute complements offer many stumbling blocks to beginners in grammar. But if the three essential types of predicate construction are thoroughly mastered early in the course, many of the difficulties of grammatical analysis will already have been conquered.

XI

THE OBJECTIVE CONSTRUCTIONS

Many verbs take two substantives; the proper object, or the accusative, and an object of reference to which the action is directed, or the dative.-TRANSLATED FROM MADVIG'S LATIN GRAMMAR.

The dative denotes in general the person or thing more remotely connected with an action.-TRANSLATED FROM CURTIUS'S GREEK GRAMMAR.

There is hardly anything more interesting than to see how the laws of grammar, which seem at first sight so hard and arbitrary, are simply the laws of the expression of logical relations in concrete form.-EVERETT.

The word object in grammar has many varieties of technical meaning.

The noun or pronoun that completes the meaning of a transitive verb by naming the receiver of the action is the object of the verb. Participles and infinitives share with verbs the power to take objects. Objects are the most important verb modifiers. They belong to the basic part of the predicate.

The term object also is applied to a noun or pronoun connected by a preposition as a subordinate to some other word. Objects of verbs and objects of prepositions are alike in one respect--they must be in the objective (i. e. the accusative) case if the word used has such a case. Both of these kinds of objects are easy to recog