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:
“But when the bowels of the earth were sought,
And men her golden entrails did espy,
This mischief then into the world was brought,
This framed the mint which coined our misery.
...
And thus began th’exordium of our woes,
The fatal dumb-show of our misery;
Here sprang the tree on which our mischief grows,
The dreary subject of world’s tragedy.”
—Michael Drayton (1563–1631)
“Thus inevitably does the universe wear our color, and every object fall successively into the subject itself. The subject exists, the subject enlarges; all things sooner or later fall into place. As I am, so I see; use what language we will, we can never say anything but what we are; Hermes, Cadmus, Columbus, Newton, Bonaparte, are the mind’s ministers.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)