Talk:Complement (linguistics)

Objects as complements
Are objects complements? There needs to be a discussion here as to whether or not they are. --74.93.119.9 14:51, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

In the syntax books I've seen, objects are one out of many types of complement (in X-bar theory, they are sisters of the head, while the specifier (eg. subject, determiner) is a sister of X'). --Kiwibird (talk) 15:17, 14 May 2008 (UTC) zcbxcbkckajsa scsjc — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.167.62.193 (talk) 09:19, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

In X-bar theory
Don't complements show up in some versions of X-bar theory? -- Beland 19:12, 21 April 2007 (UTC)


 * A complement is just the sister of a head, so given that all versions of X' theory have heads, I'd say they all have complements too.


 * Objects are generally assumed to be sisters of V (i.e. complements of V). However, these days people often assume that objects start out as complements of V and later move to a higher specifier position. Cadr 03:23, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Linguistics vs. Grammar
This is referred to as the "Complement (linguistics)" rather than "Complement (grammar)" page. I'm curious as to the reason. The first words of the first sentence identify this as a grammar issue, and the rest of the article focuses on how it interacts with subjects and objects, the pages for which are "Subject (grammar)" and "Object (grammar)" instead of "Subject (linguistics)" and "Object (linguistics)." An alternative might be to have "Complement (linguistics)" reroute to the "Predicative complements" section. Thoughts? Robigus (talk) 08:36, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Prepositional phrases
In the sentence "Libraries preserve the wisdom of the world," does "of the world" count as the complement, because "libraries preserve the wisdom" seems to not make sense? 71.142.143.183 (talk) 17:42, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Carnie 2013
There appears to be a concerted effort going on to add information from Carnie 2013 to Wikipedia articles on syntax and grammar. I suspect that students of a syntax course are doing this. This in itself may not be so bad, but I fear that these students are not yet knowledgeable enough to be adding good information. If someone knows what is going on in this regard, please respond here. I may begin a more aggressive strategy to remove any information that is either not backed by citations or that cites only Carney 2013. --Tjo3ya (talk) 23:32, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Wholesale revert
There really is no excuse for this,. I'm restoring the lead. Drmies (talk) 17:47, 16 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Drmies, I disagree with most aspects of your recent edits. The changes you made to the literature list, for instance, are not good in my view. MLA is not what linguistics journals are using. Your changes to the intro were also not good, one problem being clumsy formulations. Please respond.--Tjo3ya (talk) 19:33, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I'll take "clumsy" as a neutral observation, if you will accept that "a complement can be understood as a word, phrase or clause that is necessary to complete the meaning of a given expression" is as ungrammatical as it gets, in that it doesn't talk about grammar ("complete"). I just looked at Language and the Journal of Linguistics, and they italicize titles, which is what I did as well. Drmies (talk) 20:48, 16 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Drmies, you originally put the year at the end of the references. That practice is unlike most any linguistics journal. Some journals italicize, others do not. Your efforts in Wikipedia are a great contribution in general. There are numerous articles that need the improvements you are making. But many of the linguistics articles that I and others have worked on do not need the efforts. Judging by the articles you have worked on listed in your user page, you are not really a linguist (although you may know a number of languages). Therefore I question your qualifications to be making content changes to linguistics articles. --Tjo3ya (talk) 02:52, 17 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Tjo3ya, before I address this complement business, please let me ask you two questions. a. do you really think this is about years? b. do you know to which extent you sound like a condescending prick? and one more, for fun, c. do you think that your PhD is really so much better than mine? Drmies (talk) 03:31, 17 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Drmies, your original changes were problematic in at least three areas: 1. changes to content that were not good, 2. poor use of English formulations, and 3. changes to references that do not match conventions in linguistics circles. The intro as it now stands is not good. Please read the first section below the intro. Your intro does not match the use of the terms "subject complement" and "object complement", right? Those concepts are used in school grammar, not in linguistics circles. Your intro is thus too narrow. Here's an example of poor English: "...which do not require to be licensed and can (more) freely be employed". The combination "require to be" is odd, and the adverb phrase sounds better after the auxiliary, i.e. "...and can be more freely employed". I intend to change the intro back. Please respond.--Tjo3ya (talk) 15:22, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

In other languages
In French and Italian, complement and complemento have a different meaning, adjunct is in English the closest word to italian complemento and french complement. So the links at the left column should be fixed.Brain (talk) 16:11, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Deleted para re indicative/non-indicative
The paragraph didn't belong in the lead because neither the terms nor the distinction between them is used or mentioned anywhere else in the article.

Furthermore, I could find no articles about complements' indicativity. I don't doubt that it's a thing, at least for the author cited by the reference. But if it's a thing important enough to merit restoring here, then somebody will have to add to the article some actual discussion of the concept.—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 14:32, 30 June 2020 (UTC)