Complement (linguistics) - Complements Broadly Construed

Complements Broadly Construed

Construed in the broadest sense, any time a given expression is somehow necessary in order to render another expression "complete", it can be characterized as a complement of that expression, e.g.

with the class
Jim will help.
Chris gave up.
as a friend

Construed in this broad sense, many complements cannot be understood as arguments. The argument concept is tied to the predicate concept in a way that the complement concept is not.

Read more about this topic:  Complement (linguistics)

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