verbs like convince, allow, encourage, force and permit are also in this category, although some of these only have non-finite complement clauses.
often, a verb can appear in more than one subclass. For example, remember may take no compliment at all : it can be intransitive, as in I can't remember. But it can also be a transitive verb, as in , or it can take one of three different kinds of clausal complement, either finite, as in 14b, or non- finite, as in 14c and 14d . As usual, all the complements (in bold are contained within the VP headed by remember.
Chris couldn't ( remembered that long shopping list )
Chris couldn't ( remembered that they'd left it on the shelf )
Chris (usually remembers to pick up the list)
Chris (remembered leaving it on the shelf )
The non-finite complement clauses are divided into two types: in 14c there's an INFINITIVAL clauses, containing the infinitive form of verb pickup, and in 14d there's a PARTICIPIAL clauses, containing the present participle leaving.
this section dose not give a comprehensive list, but it illustrates some of the most common subclasses of verb found not just in English, but cross-linguistically.
Head other than verb can select different complement types. Preposition, adjective, nous and complementizers are discussed in this section Prepositions have notable variety in their complement structure, although less than verbs. I have already noted that some preposition are always transitive, whilst others may be intransitive too; there are also prepositions that are only intransitive, such as nearby, as in She lives just nearby; we don' t get * She lives nearby the bank. We can tell that nearby is truly a preposition by the fact that it co-occurs with the modifier right (see section 2.2.4.1): She lives right nearby. A number of prepositions take clausal complements, as before dose in Kim left before the bus arrived where the bus arrived is an entire clause. And prepositions sometimes take PP complements, as from does in He emerged form under the blankets.
Adjectives occasionally take an obligatory complement. For instance, fond and devoid both take an obligatory PP complement headed by the preposition of, hence the badness of*This speech is totally devoid. A number of adjectives take an optional PP complement, again headed by a specific preposition; some examples are bad/good at spelling. sorry for your friend and free from any doubts. Some adjectives ( such as sorry, happy, angry,glad,delighted) take an optional clausal complement, as in Kim felt (sorry that their friends weren't around )
We've seen so far, then, that verbs and prepositions often have an obligatory complement, and adjectives very occasionally do. The final major word class is that of nouns. Some complements to N are shown in bold in 15
Nouns often take optional complements but don't have obligatory complements. The complements may be PPs, in 15 - of tyres - and 15 - in extraterrestrials: the fact that the specific preposition within the PP is selected by the head noun shows that these truly are complements. Some nouns take optional clausal complement, as in 15c and 15d. 15c has a finite complement clause - that they would land soon, and 15d a non - finite complement clause - for the library to stay open later.
The final word class in this section is that of complementizer.
A complementizer ( abbreviated as C) is a word that introduces a clause, as we saw in Chapter 3 .The clause it introduces is the complement to the head C, and the whole phrase (complementizer plus clause) can be terned CP, a complementizer phrase:
As the examples in 16 show, some complementizers - such as that, 16a - select a finite clause as their complement; others - such as the prepositional complementizer for 16b - select a non finite clause and some can take either a finite or a non- finite complement clause, such as whether in 16c
determiners and nouns
in section 2.2.2.1, I introduced the closed class of words called
determiners ( words like the,a some, this, these)which, I proposed, pair up with nouns to form a Noun Phrase. In this chapter I have followed the traditional view that the noun is the head of the NP; the determiner, then, is one of its dependents. Many linguists consider the determiner to be a particular type of dependent know as a specifier; we could consider this as a kind of adjunct that has a fixed position within the phrase (in English, preceding the head noun ). On this view , the other closed class words that pair up with adjectives, adverb and preposition (see Section 2.2 ) are also specifiers: this covers words like right and just in the PPs right inside and just underneath.
However, more recently linguists have proposed that, in fact, the drtrtminer is the HEAD of the ' noun phrase' , and that this should really be considered as a Determiner Phrase (DP) which has an NP as the complement to a head D, AS show in 17: the head is this and its complement NP is in bo