Optional complements of English verbs and adjectives

Abstract

The chapter sets out the basic facts pertaining to optional complements of English verbs and adjectives. Such optional complements, when omitted, are often referred to as implicit arguments. The chapter rehearses the distributional facts pertaining to optional complements of English verbs and shows how analogous facts obtain for optional complements of English adjectives. In addition, it shows how to treat such words within a syntactic analysis susceptible of a model theoretic treatment faithful to speaker’s entailment judgements.