Verb complementation

No, to get hungry is the verb complement. Not exactly a direct object. It is not the object of tend-- it describes the tendency.

You say it is "Not exactly a direct object." Are you able to say what kind of verb complement it is,exactly? Traditionally, verb complements are either nouns (and these include verbal phrases that stand for nouns) or adjectives. It seems that you are saying that "to get hungry" is neither of these, but is, instead, adverbial and, thus, a modifying phrase rather than a true complement.

Hello V

Do you know what a complement is? A complement is a syntactic constituent that is indispensable to make a sentence meaningful. Let me prove "to get hungry" in "John tends to get hungry" is a complement. Take "to get hungry" from the sentence, then you will get a sentence fragment "John tends". Do you find any sense in the fragment "John tends"? I'm sure you don't. So we have to d

If you read my letter carefully, you will see that I was trying to fathom what Mr. Pedantic was saying. That is all. In view of that, I found the rhetorical thrust of your response a little sharp! In one respect, I think your analysis errs. You said: "An adverbial is a constituent that modifies a verb or a sentence. If a constituent is an adverbial, the sentence can make any sense even if that

Hi V

I am sorry but I have to say I can't agree to your analyses. "No one is here" makes some sense even when we take out "here". You have to know this "be" is used in the sense of "exist". "No one exists here". Take out "here". Then "No one exists". I feel this still makes sense.

paco

This message is my monologue. I would not speak to anyone. It's just my monologue.

I think it's not wise to relate "complement" to certain parts of speech, i.e., nouns and adjectives. Take a construction of "He seems". It takes various forms of speech.
Paco seems [foolish] …. adjective.
Paco seems [a fool] ….. noun.
Paco seems [to be a Japanese person] … infinitive clause.

OK... Too, a rather conventional response to a question like, "Is anyone there?" could be, "No one is" or ... (ta da!), "I am." However, aren't these elliptical sentences?

I think I'll dig my heels in on this one. Your exceptional cases may be understood within a conventional subject complement framework.

Hello V

As you see I am neither a professional linguist nor an English teacher. I am a mere English learner from Japan. I'm learning grammar things just as a tool to make my acquisition of English easy. So I don't care much about which theory is right and which theory is wrong. What I am concerned about is which theory is convenient for me to learn English. So I really don't mind it if

Do we have a clear answer to the original question yet?