An adverbial complement is an

adverbial In English grammar, an adverbial (abbreviated ) is a word (an adverb) or a group of words (an adverbial clause or adverbial phrase) that modifies or more closely defines the sentence or the verb. (The word ''adverbial'' itself is also used as a ...

that is required to complete the meaning of a verb, such that if it is removed, it will yield an ungrammatical sentence or an intrinsically different meaning of the verb. They stand in contrast to adverbial adjuncts, which can be removed from a sentence without altering its structure or meaning. Adverbial complements often accompany

verbs A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descrip ...

of caused motion such as ''put'' or ''place'': *She put the cheese ''back''. **She put the cheese. *Now place the vase ''on the mantlepiece''. **Now place the vase. However, they can occur with other types of verbs as well: *We are staying ''in a hotel''. **We are staying.

Theoretical approaches

Head-driven phrase structure grammar describes adverbial complements as part of the

verb A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...

subcategorization frame In linguistics, subcategorization denotes the ability/necessity for lexical items (usually verbs) to require/allow the presence and types of the syntactic arguments with which they co-occur. The notion of subcategorization is similar to the noti ...

, which is why they are obligatory arguments. In this theory, adverbial complements are stored in the

lexicon A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Koine Greek language, Greek word (), neuter of () ...

as part of the grammatical competence relating to the verb. An alternative description, along the lines of

construction grammar Construction grammar (often abbreviated CxG) is a family of theories within the field of cognitive linguistics which posit that constructions, or learned pairings of linguistic patterns with meanings, are the fundamental building blocks of human ...

is that they are parts of certain

argument structure constructions An argument is a statement or group of statements called premises intended to determine the degree of truth or acceptability of another statement called conclusion. Arguments can be studied from three main perspectives: the logical, the dialecti ...

– in this case the caused motion construction – which are specifically compatible with the semantics of the verb. Here, adverbial complements are stored in the grammar as part of the caused motion construction which is a sign in its own right. Another

construction Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form objects, systems, or organizations,"Construction" def. 1.a. 1.b. and 1.c. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Press 2009 and com ...

-based theory combines the two arguing that certain senses of verbs co-occur so frequently with certain argument structure constructions, that the argument structures are also stored as part of the grammatical competence relating to the verb. These small argument structure constructions are called mini-constructions. So, in the case of ''put'', in accordance with this theory, adverbial complements are both part of the argument structure construction and stored as information regarding the verb itself.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Adverbial Complement Grammar

Theoretical approaches

See also

References