Unit 13 The Complement
Check Your Understanding
1. F
2. W
3. F
4. T
5. R
On hearing the news, Mary blushed.
In-Class Activities
1. (1) In the first picture: jealous, smelling like French toast; in the second picture: sold to you
(2) Subject complement: smelling like French toast; object complements: jealous; sold to you
(3) No. “regard” must take “as”.
2. (1) In the first picture: the prepositional phrase “to its clear and upright position”; in the second
picture: the prepositional phrase “in a clean condition”; in the third picture: the prepositional
phrases “down the lavatory”.
They can be regarded as object complements mainly because the predicate verbs in these
sentences (i.e. return, leave, and flush) are all causative verbs, which cause their direct
objects (i.e. your head, the toilets, and sanitary dressings) to be in a special condition of
spatial existence or movement; that’s why they are usually associated with prepositional
phrases indicating space positions or directions used as the object complements to their direct
objects. It should be noted that some grammarians may prefer to analyze the above
mentioned prepositional phrases as adverbials rather than object complements.
(2) In the first picture, the prepositional phrase “to its clear and upright position” informs the
effect of the action of “returning” on the object. In the second picture, the prepositional
phrase “in a clean condition” is also used to indicate the state of the object caused by some
action. In the third picture, “down the lavatory” is used to indicate the direction of the
movement “flushing”.
3. (1) Verbs with a depictive tendency: feel, continue, appear, look, keep, seem, smell, remain,
sound, taste, stay, prove; Verbs with a resultative tendency: become, come, fall, get, go , grow,
turn.
(2) Yes. In terms of the form, Sentence (a) differs from Sentence (b) only in that the subject
complement of the former is a noun phrase but that of the latter an infinitival clause; in
contrast to the first two sentences, the subject of Sentence (c) is a dummy “it” rather than
“Oslo” and its complement is a that-clause. Among the verbs mentioned above, the verb
“appear” can be used in a similar way.
(3) More examples of this type: slam shut, lie flat, run wild, feel a fool, rest assured, fall down
dead, etc.
4. (1) Because the predicate verb “make” should take an obligatory object complement and the
predicate verb “hammer” can take an optional object complement.
MAKE-type: drive, get, put, render, sent, set, turn, appoint, elect, name, vote, designate;
HAMMER-type: knock, paint, push, wash, frighten.
(2) The first sentence is actually a SVC sentence while the second is a SVOO sentence; when
used as the object, a countable noun usually has to take an explicit determiner rather than
zero determiner, so Sentence (b) can be improved as “They promised him a secretary”.
Like “appoint”, the predicate verb “remain” is a complex transitive verb, which is used to
form a SVC sentence, while like “promise”, the predicate verb “question” is a
mono-transitive verb, which is used to form a SVO sentence. Therefore, in contrast to its
being used as the object complement, the countable noun “secretary”, when used as the
object, should take an explicit determiner, hence the grammaticality of the sentences “She
remained treasurer” and “She questioned the treasurer” and the ungrammaticality of the
sentence “She questioned treasurer”.
(3) The predicate verb “make” is obviously a complex transitive verb, so Sentence (a) in Group
D is a SVC sentence, the notional object of which is actually the that-clause; the pronoun
“it” is used as the so-called formal object to take the place of the heavy clausal object for the
sake of structural balance. The predicate verb “promise” is actually a ditransitive verb, so
Sentence (b) should be SVOO in structure; its ungrammaticality is actually due to the
abnormal order of its two objects: instead of the indirect object “his team” the direct object
“it” (used as the formal object to replace the heavy notional clausal object) immediately
follows the predicate verb “promise”; the reordering of these two objects in turn makes it
unnecessary to use the formal object “it” for the sake of structural balance because the
heavy clausal direct object (i.e. the that-clause) itself has already been at the end of the
sentence. So Sentence (b) can be revised as “The coach promised his team that they can
enjoy a holiday after this intensive training.”
5. (1) The second sentences in each group should be the better choice, because they are
semantically closer to the first sentences, for the state of “being penniless” and the state of
“being the best friends” are both foregrounded in the first two rather than the third sentence
in each group.
(2) The SVC analysis is preferred; for the first sentence is preferred to be interpreted as the
second sentence in each group, which obviously is SVC in structure.
(3) More examples:
They married young.
They came in drunk.
The bird fell dead to the ground.
6. (1) It is very difficult to generalize the way we can question the complement, but a weak
tendency can be identified: if the complements are realized by noun phrases, such wh-words
as “what”, “which”, and “who” can be used; if the complements are realized by adjective
phrases and prepositional phrases, the wh-word “how” is preferred.
(2) No, we cannot, because if we are asked the question “What was the captain”, we cannot give
an answer like “The captain was my brother”; if we asked the question “Who was the
captain”, we can answer “The captain was my bother.”
(3) We may phrase our question as: What do you think about the seminar?
7. (1) The verbs that can take a to-less infinitive as the object complement mainly includes: the
verbs of coercive meaning such as “let”, “have” and “make”; the perceptual verbs of seeing
and hearing such as “feel”, “hear”, “notice”, “observe”, “overhear”, “see”, and “watch”;
verbs like “help” and “know”.
(2) The passive version of Sentence (b) is “The students were made to work in pairs by the
teacher.”
(3) The infinitival complement indicates that the whole process of “knocking” is over, while the
V-ing complement indicates that the act of “knocking” is going on at the moment.
Post-Class Tasks
1. a. The unanimous vote made Mr. Obama the first African-American to become a major party
nominee for president. (object complement realized by a noun phrase )
b. Any attempt to strengthen a country's own security at the expense of that of others is
detrimental to maintaining global security and stability. ( subject complement realized by an
adjective phrase )
c. They actually want us to reward them for the last eight years by giving them four more.
(object complement realized by an infinitive clause )
d. It was less than four years ago that Mr. Obama, coming off of serving seven years as an
Illinois state senator, became a member of the United States Senate. (subject complement
realized by a noun phrase )
e. Mr. Obama’s nomination came 120 years after Frederick Douglass became (1) the first
African-American to have his name (2)entered in nomination at a major party convention. ((1)
subject complement realized by a noun phrase; (2) object complement realized by an V-ed
clause )
f. Even the lower figure would put the bill at twice the cost of the opening ceremony at the 2004
Athens Games. (object complement realized by a prepositional phrase )
g. At one point, thousands of large umbrellas were snapped open to reveal the smiling,
multicultural faces of children of the global village. (subject complement realized by an
adjective )
h. The scale and speed of that growth often leaves the outside world awed, but also worried.
(object complement realized by an adjective phrase )
2. a. He has proved it a fallacy that old age brings wisdom.
b. Her parents named her Gladys.
c. He thought desirable most of the women in the room.
d. She was seen to enter the hall.
f. Charles Babbage is generally considered to have invented the first computer.
g. The woman woke up in the middle of the night, looked out of her window and saw something
strange hovering over the trees in the park.
h. The crowd fell silent when a Marine veteran said he had once voted for Mr. McCain, but was
now supporting Mr. Obama.
i. My long-term goal is to get myself elected to Council.
3. a. He left home a mere child and returned quite a different man.
b. Her niece was held captive for several years.
c. She presumed that her father had been dead.
d. What I regret is that I am not able to accept your kind invitation.
e. She believed it an advantage to be out of town.
f. How wide is the lake?
4. a. object; b. subject; c. attributive; d. object complement; e. adverbial; f. object complement; g.
notional subject; h. object complement; i. attributive
5. a. subject; b. attributive; c. object complement; d. object; prepositional object; e. attributive; f.
object complement; g. adverbial; h. object; i. adverbial
6. a. adverbial; b. object complement; c. attributive; d. object complement; e. adverbial