ABSTRACT
The syntactico-semantic characterization can be used to control various grammatical features, like the ability of some roles to occur with the progressive auxiliary verb and its ability to occur in imperative sentences. This chapter looks at the functional roles of subject, object and complement, and at the various syntactic and semantic properties that can be associated with these functions. All full declarative sentences must have a subject. This is an noun phrase (NP). Grammatical subjects are never marked with a preposition. NPs that fulfil these characteristics are called grammatical subjects. The grammatical object, like the subject, is realized by an NP. Traditional grammars distinguish between a number of different complement types. The names given to them relate to the propositional roles that they realize. Subjects, objects and complements form the nucleus of a sentence. Adjuncts are usually adverbials. Adjuncts are typically optional sentence constituents, and have a degree of mobility within the sentence denied to the nuclear constituents.
