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6. Verb Complementation
- Hong Kong University Press, HKU
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Introduction Learning the grammar of a language (to put it simply) is mainly learning about what kinds of words or phrases go with what other kinds of words or phrases to form sentences. For example, what kinds of words would go with a noun? From what you have seen so far, they would include: • Determiners (like a, the, this, that, my, her) • Adjectives (like good, bad, noisy, political) • Prepositional phrases (like on the table, in Hong Kong, at the ceremony) • Relative clauses (like who hates grammar, which I saw yesterday, smiling at me) We can ‘build up’ a noun phrase with one or more of the above parts attached to a noun, as in: 1. [The bad student who hates grammar] is going to regret it. 2. [The noisy protesters at the ceremony] were removed by the police. Beneath the surface, there are actually quite a lot of similarities between the grammars of different languages, like English and Chinese. For example, in both English and Chinese, all the ‘parts’ mentioned above can go with a noun to form a noun phrase. Of course, there are some differences in word order — e.g. in Chinese the relative clause precedes (rather than follows) the noun head, as in: 1. !"#$% = !"# ([The hate grammar bad student] failed the exam) 6 Verb Complementation 92 Understanding English Grammar What you’ll need to do in learning English as a second language is to understand these differences and get them ‘into your system’. This book helps you to focus on them better. To refresh your memory a bit, in the last three units, we have been looking at what goes with verbs. First, there are auxiliaries that go with a verb to form a verb group, as in [may have been sleeping]. Then, we saw that certain verbs — i.e. transitive verbs — are followed by objects, as in [eat durians]. In this unit, we will look at verbs which need to be ‘completed’ by something else other than objects. A thing which completes something else is called a ‘complement’. Objects are the most common type of complement. Now we’ll see what other types of complements there are. There exist a number of patterns in English, so let’s explore them one by one. Pattern One Consider the following question. QUESTION 1 The following sentences are incomplete. How would you complete each of them? Try to keep it brief and simple. (NB: In case some of the verbs can be completed by an object, avoid using an object and try something different, just to see how it works.) 1. He decided . 2. He agreed . 3. He promised . 4. He wanted . 5. He intended . 6. He tried . 7. He pretended . 8. He attempted . In trying to complete the above sentences after these verbs, you will probably have discovered two things: [44.213.99.37] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 11:28 GMT) Verb Complementation 93 (i) A second verb is normally needed to complete the first verb, for example: 1. He decided to resign. 2. He agreed to repay the money in full. (ii) The second verb is in the infinitive form and normally begins with the ‘infinitive marker’ to. It would be wrong to leave out the marker, or to use a finite second verb, for example: 1. * He decided resign. 2. * He agreed to repaid the money in full. QUESTION 2 Think of three other verbs which are like the ones in Question 1, and make a sentence with each of these verbs: 1. 2. 3. QUESTION 3 The following sentences are taken from students’ writings. Correct any errors that you may find. 1. Blackburn wanted Tom left DigiCom. Answer: 2. Kevin wanted Angela marry him. Answer: 94 Understanding English Grammar 3. Angela decided not see her. Answer: 4. She told him don’t look back. Answer: 5. The heat made the mud becoming rock. Answer: The above exercise shows that some students are still unsure of the form of the second verb in completing the first verb. Let’s study this a bit further. Pattern Two Look again at the first verbs in Question 1. There is another important point that we can make about them. Some of these verbs can take an object in addition to the complement, for example: He wanted his son to be home before midnight. But some others cannot take an object, for example: * He decided his son to be home before midnight. QUESTION 4 Which of the verbs in...