Predicative Subject and Object Complements
In many traditional grammars, the terms subject complement and object complement are employed to denote the predicative expressions (e.g. predicative adjectives and nominals) that serve to assign a property to a subject or object, e.g.
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- Larry is upset.
- Susan is the boss.
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- That made Fred lazy.
- We call Susan the boss.
Although widespread in school grammar, this use of terminology is not employed by many modern theories of syntax. The expressions in bold are viewed as part of the clause predicate, which means they are not complements of the subject or object, but rather they are properties that are predicated of the subject or object.
Read more about this topic: Complement (linguistics)
Famous quotes containing the words subject and/or object:
“You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analogous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination. Hold the philosophy, hold the adjectives, just give us a plain subject and verb and perhaps a wholesome, nonfattening adverb or two.”
—Larry McMurtry (b. 1936)
“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and make it the object of our game; to turn it into a toy.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)