Required and Optional Elements in English Sentences (Complements and Adjuncts)

📝 Required & Optional Elements in English Sentences: Complements & Adjuncts 📚

Let’s break down how English sentences are built, looking at the parts that are essential and those that add extra detail! This understanding helps you craft and comprehend sentences with greater accuracy and confidence.

1. The Building Blocks: Sentences & Their Core 🧱

• A sentence is a fundamental structural unit in language.
• Every English sentence must have a subject and a predicate. These are the required components.
  • Subject: The doer or topic of the sentence.
  • Predicate: Contains the verb and all other information related to it. The verb is a very significant part of the predicate.
• The human mind doesn’t have difficulty processing large sentences, as a sentence is a sentence regardless of its size. Creating larger sentences is often necessary for coherent discourse.

2. Complements (Required Elements) ✅

• What they are: Complements are structurally indispensable parts of a sentence, clause, or phrase. They are essential for a sentence to be grammatically complete and understandable.
• Function:
  • They are typically objects of verbs.
  • Transitive verbs (verbs that perform an action on something) mandatorily require a complement (an object) to complete their meaning. Without them, the sentence feels incomplete.
  • They “complete the sense” or “complete the sentence”.
• Absence: If a complement is missing, the sentence becomes incomplete and ungrammatical.
  • Example: “Raju needs for his exam” is incomplete because it’s missing “needs what?”.
  • Example: “Ramu eats after dinner” is incomplete; it needs “eats what?”.
• Placement: Complements are always close to their “heads” (the verb or noun they are completing).
• Quantity: Generally, a verb will have only one complement. Some “ditransitive verbs” can have two objects, meaning a maximum of two complements.
• Examples:
  • “John loves Mary”. Here, “Mary” is the direct object and complement of the verb “loves”.
  • “John likes pizza”. “Pizza” is the complement of “likes”.
  • “Drink a glass of water before food”. “A glass of water” is the object and complement of “drink”.

3. Adjuncts (Optional Elements) 🎨

• What they are: Adjuncts are structurally dispensable elements in a sentence, clause, or phrase. Their presence or absence does not affect the grammatical correctness of the sentence’s core structure.
• Function:
  • They provide additional information about the verb, the entire predicate, or even a noun phrase.
  • They modify or describe other parts of the sentence.
  • Often, adjuncts take the form of adverbs or prepositional phrases.
• Placement: Adjuncts can be placed in various positions, and their order isn’t always fixed. They are not required to be close to the element they modify in the same way complements are.
• Quantity: Unlike complements, you can have multiple adjuncts in a sentence or phrase.
• Examples:
  • “John likes pizza with his friends”. “With his friends” provides additional information about liking or pizza but isn’t essential for the verb “likes”. It’s an adjunct of the noun phrase “pizza”.
  • “John and Mary like pizza in the evening”. “In the evening” gives time information about “liking”.
  • “Raju helped Ramu in the morning”. “In the morning” is an adjunct that modifies the verb “helped” by indicating time.
  • “Drink a glass of water before food”. “Before food” is an adjunct that gives information about “water”.

4. Key Differences & Why it Matters 🎯

• Complements: Essential for grammatical completeness, usually direct/indirect objects of verbs, and structurally tied closely to their head. Removing them makes a sentence ungrammatical.
• Adjuncts: Optional elements that add extra information, often adverbs or prepositional phrases, and can be moved or removed without breaking the core sentence structure.
• Understanding this distinction helps you not only identify the core meaning of a sentence but also to add richness and detail without compromising its grammatical foundation. It boosts your confidence in speaking and writing.

✍️ Practice Questions

1. Identify whether the bolded part of each sentence is a complement (C) or an adjunct (A). a) Sarah eats an apple every day. b) He works in a shop. c) She told me a secret. d) I went to the cinema last night. e) My brother lives in London.

2. Explain why you would classify “very carefully” as an adjunct in the sentence: “Please read the text very carefully.”

3. Rewrite the following sentence by removing all adjuncts. Is the resulting sentence still grammatically complete? “They played football enthusiastically on the muddy field yesterday afternoon.”

✅ Answers

1. Identification: a) Sarah eats an apple every day. ➡️ C (object of “eats”) b) He works in a shop. ➡️ A (additional information about “works”; “works” is an intransitive verb and doesn’t require an object) c) She told me a secret. ➡️ C (both “me” and “a secret” are complements/objects of the ditransitive verb “told”) d) I went to the cinema last night. ➡️ A (additional information about “went”; “went” is an intransitive verb) e) My brother lives in London. ➡️ A (additional information about “lives”; “lives” is an intransitive verb)

2. Explanation for “very carefully”:

   • In “Please read the text very carefully,” “very carefully” is an adjunct.
   • It functions as an adverb, specifically modifying the verb “read” by telling how the action is performed.
   • Its removal (“Please read the text.”) would not make the sentence ungrammatical or incomplete, which is the defining characteristic of an adjunct. The core meaning (reading the text) remains intact.

3. Rewriting and Analysis:

   • Original sentence: “They played football enthusiastically on the muddy field yesterday afternoon.”
   • Rewritten sentence (adjuncts removed): “They played football.”
   • Yes, the resulting sentence “They played football” is still grammatically complete. “Played” is a transitive verb, and “football” is its object/complement, which is the required element. The bolded parts in the original sentence (“enthusiastically,” “on the muddy field,” “yesterday afternoon”) are all adjuncts, providing additional details without being structurally indispensable.