Clause structure, complements, and adjuncts

Abstract

In this chapter we investigate the structure of canonical clauses , the syntactically most elementary type of clause. Various kinds of non-canonical clause will be introduced from time to time, but solely for the purpose of illuminating the structure of canonical clauses. Very often the best evidence for analysing one construction is provided by a comparison between it and a different but related construction. Canonical clauses have the potential to stand alone as sentences, and we therefore follow the standard convention of citing examples with the punctuation of sentences, i.e. with an initial capital letter and final full stop. Introduction Every canonical clause has a head element with the form of a verb phrase (VP) . Every VP in turn has as its head a verb (V) . Thus a canonical clause always contains a V which is the head of a VP which is the head of the clause. The verb is the most important element in determining what the rest of the clause is like. From now on we'll refer to the verb as the head word of the clause. Predicates and predicators The term ‘head’ was not introduced into grammatical theory until the latter half of the twentieth century, and in talking about clause structure we will generally use the traditional, long-established terminology where the two major elements in the clause are called subject and predicate .