Objective Complements or Objects

Objective complements are noun (or noun-equivalent) adjuncts of objective verbs denoting the object of the action or the subject. They are not attached to the verb only, but to any part of the sentence. E.g. Writing letters is a pleasure. There was no time to see her.

The objects are divided into prepositional and postpositionless, the latter into direct and indirect (as to their meaning and position in the sentence).

The direct object denotes something or somebody directly affected by the action of the verb while the indirect object (non-prepositional) denotes a person to whose benefit the action is performed or towards whom it is directed. E.g. He sent me a letter.

The indirect object is used only with a few verbs mostly conveying the idea of giving a person a thing and only in combination with the direct object, which as a rule follows the indirect object.

In the sentence “He sent me” “me” would be understood as a direct object (меня).

The prepositional objects with “to” and “for” are often grammatical synonyms of the indirect object.

In other words, the cognate object is a special kind of a non-prepositional object, which is always expressed by nouns of the same root or meaning with the governing verb. The verbs taking cognate objects are otherwise intransitive verbs. E.g. We live a happy life. She slept a sound sleep.

The cognate object occupies a place intermediate between an object and adverbial modifier expressing rather an adverbial than objective relation. E.g. He laughed a happy laugh = He laughed happily. The prepositional object is an object the relation of which to the governing word (a verb, an adjective, etc.) is expressed by means of various prepositions. E.g. You may rely on me in that matter. I don’t care for such people.

The object expressed by a complex is often called a complex object. E.g. I knew it to be nonsense.

The complex object is an object direct or prepositional consisting of two components of which the second stands in predicate relation to the first. The two components form an invisible syntactical unit, which is regarded as one part of the sentence. The complex object may be expressed only by a predicative construction (infinitive, participial, gerundial). E.g. He watched her enter the house. We are waiting for the rain to stop. Excuse John’s coming so late.

The object may be structural: I felt it (objective predicative) difficult to refuse (notional object).

Sometimes the difference between the object and the adverbial modifier is neutralized. E.g. They passed a mile in silence. She waited an hour. They appointed an hour.

Adverbial Complements (or modifiers)

Adverbial Complements are adjuncts of verbs and convey qualitative, quantitative or circumstantial characteristics of the action denoted by the verb. E.g. He said it in disgust.

The adverbials denote either external relations (of time, place, reason, purpose, etc) or inner qualities of the actions (manner, degree, etc) and are more independent of the verb than the object.

The position of the object especially that of a direct or indirect object is fixed; adverbial modifiers, especially adverbials of external relations are relatively free as to their position in the sentence. E.g. I met a friend (1) of mine on the way (2) to the university (and vise versa 2-1). It is not always easy to draw hard and fast lines between the secondary parts of the sentence, especially when they are expressed by prepositional phrases. It is noteworthy that the choice of the preposition before a prepositional object depends on the verb; the choice of the preposition before an adverbial modifier does not. E.g. Fleur went up to her room (adv. mod.) and sat in the dark (adv. mod.). Mrs. Brook pondered on the delay (object).

According to their meaning adverbial modifiers may be classified as follows:

a) Of place: Outside it was getting dark.

b) Of time: Martin talked for 15 minutes with him.

c) Of manner or attending circumstances: She walked briskly.

d) Of degree: I was completely happy.

e) Of cause: I flushed simply from being spoken to.

f) Of purpose: She stopped for a moment to ease her back.

g) Of result: Ben was too busy to hear him.

h) Of condition: In case of your absence I shall leave you a note.

i) Of concession: She laughed in spite of her…

An adverbial modifier may be expressed by an adverb, a noun with a preposition, a participle, a gerund with a preposition, an infinitive, a whole syntactical word combination.

The complex adverbial modifier is an adverbial modifier, which consists of 2 components, the second component being in predicate relation to the first one. The 2 components form an invisible syntactical unit, which is regarded as a part of the sentence.

The complex adverbial modifier may be expressed by an infinitive (very frequent), participial or gerundial constructions. E.g. It was too chilly for him to stay here. How didi you get out without his seeing you. It being now pretty late, we went home.

The Extension

The extensions are adverbial modifiers, which are adjuncts of adjectives and adverbs (modifiers of modifiers). E.g. You speak too loud.

The Attribute

The most difficult question in the study of the attribute is its position in its general system of parts of the sentence. The question is this: is the attribute a secondary part of the sentence standing on the same level with the object and the adverbial modifier, or is it a unit of a lower rank?

Prof. Ilyish is in favor of the view that the attribute is a part of a phrase, rather than the sentence.

The attribute is a word or a group of words, which is an adjunct of a noun or substantivized part of speech. E.g. A voice inside, the man there, something to remind me of.

The attribute can be expressed by a noun, adjective, adverb, numeral, a verbal, a pronoun, etc. It can be prepositive or postpositive, depending on the morphological peculiarities or stylistic factors.

An attribute expressed by a prepositional phrase, an adverb is usually postpositive. Postpositive attributes are sometimes characteristic of official style of speech: Cf. Next Monday – Monday next, from times immemorial, those present semantically the attribute may be qualitative (deep sea), quantitative (many children), circumstantial (man there).

A variant of an attribute is the apposition – a noun placed at the side of another noun to characterize a person or thing the head word denotes by indicating the class or group to which this person or idea belongs: aunt Mary, Professor Brown, the city of New York, the battle of Moscow, a flower of a girl.

Sometimes transformational analysis helps to distinguish between the attribute and the apposition: woman doctor – a doctor that is woman; but child psychology – psychology that is … a child?!

The apposition may be a 1) close or 2) loose one.

1) Doctor Brown, 2) Leo Tostoy, the great Russian writer.

1) A close apposition enters into such close relations with its head noun that they form a group with one stress. The head noun is often a proper noun, the name of a person; the apposition denotes rank, profession, relationship, etc. E.g. Doctor Watson, Major Smith, Peter the Great.

2) A loose apposition follows the head word and has the force of a descriptive attribute. E.g. He is a good boy, your cousin Val.

Sentence and Communication (Functional Sentence perspective)

A sentence carries a communication. A sentence is a unit of language. Communication is a unit of thought. Communication falls into 2 parts: ‘the known’ (also called the topic, the logical subject, the theme) and ‘the new’ (the comment, the logical predicate, the rheme). The portion of the sentence, which is ‘the known’ expresses the starting point of the communication, whereas ‘the new’ contains new information. The former is usually the subject (or the subject-group) of the sentence, the latter is the predicate (or the predicate-group). E.g. The girl (the known) had a little basket in her hand (the new).

The most important semantic element in the communication, which is part of ‘the new’, is called the center of a communication. In the given sentence it is ‘a little basket’. There are sentences, which carry only new information. E.g. It is evening. The whole sentence is ‘the new’ the grammatical subject ‘it’ has no lexical meaning and cannot be the starting point of the communication.

There are many sentences in which the grammatical structure does not coincide with its communicative structure, i.e. ‘the new’ may be part of the subject-group. E.g. in the corner stood a table set for three. The grammatical subject is the center of the communication.

60% of the total are sentences, in which the communicative division coincides with their grammatical division. In connected speech the center of communication of a sentence may become the starting point of the sentence that follows. E.g. Cora and Alan were sitting in a cab (center). The cab (the known) slowed down near the theatre.

A better term for ‘the known’, the starting point of the action is ‘the theme’, and for ‘the new’, the center of communication is ‘the rheme’. They came into use lately, particularly in the works of several Czech linguists. The terms ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’ are both derived from Greek