object complement

Related to object complement: Subject complement

object complement

Sometimes a verb is not complete with only a direct object, especially when that direct object is a person. More information about the object’s relationship with the verb is required to form a complete thought. This additional information is known as the object complement.

An object complement is a word or group of words that describes, renames, or completes the direct object of the verb; without one, we are left asking what about the state or condition of the direct object as a result of the verb.

An object complement can be a noun or noun phrase; an adjective or adjective phrase; a relative clause (also known as an adjective clause); an infinitive or infinitive phrase; or a participle or participle phrase.

object complement

A noun, adjective, or pronoun serving as a complement to a verb and qualifying its direct object, as governor in They elected him governor. Also called objective complement.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ob′ject com′plement

a noun, noun phrase, pronoun, or adjective used in the predicate following a factitive verb and referring to or identified with its direct object, as treasurer in We appointed him treasurer or white in They painted the house white.

Also called objective complement.

[1905–10]

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References in periodicals archive ?

As Table 6 shows, there is a significant relationship between syntactic function and structural type of postmodifier {[chi square] (21) =173 p<0.000}; NPs at indirect object (71%) and object complement (61%) positions are very much likely to realise NPs with clausal postmodifier.

It is important to note that NPs at indirect object and object complement syntactic positions exhibit a negative relationship (0% versus 0%) with adjectival postmodifier.

Of all the different structures of postmodifier, the relatively complex postmodifier (P2-P5) is the most likely structure to be realised by NPs at the direct object position (61%), prepositional complement (55%), subject complement (54%), apposition (57%), while P1 postmodifier is the most preferred choice with NPs at the object complement (54%).

Object complement The Minister of Information called Boko Haram a disease 7.

Structural patterns of postmodifier in Nigerian English noun phrase

Like the energic they can be followed by a pronoun from the object series, (9) anna-ka 'that you'; they are neutrally followed by an accusative complement if nominal rather than pronominal; and anna itself marks an object complement.

The verbs may be predisposed to occur with certain types of complements: adkhala 'make enter', for instance, occurs only with a pronominal object complement in its four tokens.

With pronoun object complement; see (18), (20), and (22), above.

The historical linguistics of the intrusive *-n in Arabic and West Semitic

The subject is well defined but the object or object complement is not well defined and cannot be matched with infor-mation from the domain ontology (ex.4 "...

So, we convert the sentence in a new one where the object becomes the subject and the object complement the verb and object of the new sentence.

User interactions with multimedia repositories using natural language interfaces--OntoNL: an Architectural Framework and its implementation

However, the variety of syntactic elements described in the models previously mentioned is more complete from a formal perspective, as they distinguish between the syntactic functions of subject, direct, indirect and prepositional objects, subject complement, object complement, predicator complement and adjunts.

On pragmatic functions and their correlation with syntactic functions: a functionalist perspective

1,000,000 occurrences under three major headings: (a) as lexical verb in non-copular constructions; (b) as lexical verb linking subject and subject complement or direct object and object complement; and (c) as auxiliary verb.

Dictionary of Old English: Fascicle B

The six basic sentence forms varied according to adverbial phrases, infinitives, and object complements added by some students: for example, Our baby does sleep a lot--Pattern 1 (noun phrase and intransitive verb) + adverbial phrase; The man wants to live here--Pattern 2 (noun phrase, verb, noun phrase), the direct object in this case being an object complement + adverb; then later the city grew bigger--Adverb + Pattern 3 (noun phrase, copula, adjective).