ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how clauses differ from each other in respect of the presence or absence of complements. It explains the main characteristic of an intensive clause that its proposition is concerned with the existence, identity or character of the subject. What is said about the subject is something that helps us to place it in our scheme of thing and an intensive clause can exist without any lexical verb as predicator. In the ascriptive type of intensive clause the complement is an attribute to the subject and it has the function of stating the significance or value of the subject by ascribing to it a property or function, or placing it in a certain class. The chapter focuses on important functional element for which people not yet accounted is the one that goes under the traditional name of adverb particle and this name is noncommittal on the question whether it is a complement or an adjunct.
