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
In brewing, adjuncts are unmalted grains (such as corn, rice, rye, oats, barley, and wheat) or grain products used in brewing beer which supplement the main mash ingredient (such as malted barley). This is often done with the intention of cutt ...
, which can be removed from a sentence without altering its structure or meaning.
Adverbial complements often accompany
verbs 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 Head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG) is a highly lexicalized, constraint-based grammar
developed by Carl Pollard and Ivan Sag. It is a type of phrase structure grammar, as opposed to a dependency grammar, and it is the immediate successor ...
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 descr ...
s'
subcategorization frame, which is why they are obligatory arguments. In this theory, adverbial complements are stored in the
lexicon 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 – 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 ...
-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.
See also
*
Adjunct
Adjunct may refer to:
* Adjunct (grammar), words used as modifiers
* Adjunct professor, a rank of university professor
* Adjuncts, sources of sugar used in brewing
* Adjunct therapy used to complement another main therapeutic agent, either to impr ...
*
Conjunct
{{For, the linguistic and logical operation of conjunction, Logical conjunction
In linguistics, the term conjunct has three distinct uses:
*A conjunct is an adverbial that adds information to the sentence that is not considered part of the propos ...
*
Disjunct
*
English grammar
English grammar is the set of structural rules of the English language. This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and whole texts.
This article describes a generalized, present-day Standard English – a form of speec ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Adverbial Complement
Grammar