Session 3: The Complements and The Expletives

Hello my fellas, how you doing so far; you guys okay?
This is the third session in which I want to explain to you all about the complements and the expletives. Before explaining them, did you see the second session and do the exercise? I hope that you find out about the differences between the direct and the indirect object.
This time I want to explain to you about the complement and expletive. Have you heard the definition of the complements and the expletives? If you have not, let’s get started.


The Complement (C)

Complement is a word or words, especially an adjective or a noun, that is used after linking verbs such as be and become describes the subject of the verb.
A complement always follows a linking verb; that is, a verb expresses a condition. There are four complements in linguistics, such as subject, object, verb, and adverbial complements. However, I am just going to explain you about what subject and object complements mean as the basic complements.

1. Subject complements
A complement describes a subject by means of the verb. The grammatical construction is (SUBJECT + VERB/LINKING VERB + COMPLEMENT).
a. I am late (predicative adjective)
S LV C
b. he seems angry (predicative adjective)
S LV C
As you can see in the first example, “I am late”, “late” as a complement and it pertains to a subject of “I” as well as the second example. Why does the word of “am” and “angry” refer to a linking verb, not verb? Because it states a situation, not an action. That is all about the subject complements. So,is it really easy for you to do?. Let’s go to the other section.

2. Object complements
A complement describes an object by means of the verb. The grammatical construction is (SUBJECT + VERB/LINKING VERB + OBJECT + COMPLEMENT).
a. He named his child Johnson (predicative noun)
S V O C
b. They left their child alone (predicative adjective)
S V O C
Can you see the grammatical structure? “He named his child Johnson”, “Johnson” is considered as a complement that refers to “his child”. Therefore, it is called as a predicative noun.

The Expletives (EX)

Expletive is a linguistic term which does not have a meaning form syntactic expletives; that is, words that perform a syntactic role but contribute nothing to meaning. For example, there or it is an expletive example which omit the actual subject that is followed by the verb is considered as an empty word.
a. It is an old house
EX
b. There is a new problem
EX

However, there is an exception for the expletive it in such sentence as “It is raining now”. From this sentence, we can know that someone says “it is raining now”, it can take into a conclusion that someone is talking about the weather. Even so, the it in such sentence are sometimes considered as an expletive.
Can you find out the grammatical structure? In the first example, “it is an old house”, “it” does not have a meaning and “it” does not refer to anything.
That is all we have for today’s session. It is a good chance for you to do the exercises in order to enlighten your knowledge about the complements and the expletives. Meanwhile, why don't you try to do the exercise that I have in the other post;

session 3: Identifying complements and expletives.