Text Chapter 11
Text Chapter 13
Grammar Text Table of Contents

Sentence Pattern #7:  Subj. + V_t + DO + OC (Nom) [Nominal Objective Complement]

Examples:

                                        They crowned Victoria queen.

The students and the faculty have unanimously elected Willy outstanding male athlete of the year.

Although this pattern might be the most difficult for students to master, there is also less to be said about it. Especially, after we have discussed all of the other patterns. In Pattern #6, we examined its partner the adjectival object complement. In appearance, Pattern #7 is identical to Pattern #6 except that in Pattern #7 the object complement is a nominal rather than an adjectival constituent..

The difficulty for most students in recognizing this pattern is that the DO and the OC look so much alike that students have difficulty deciding which is which. The simplistic answer is that the first one is the DO and the second one is the OC. But then there is a mysterious interference that wafts over the entire situation from the direction of indirect objects. I say mysterious because there seems to be no reason for this interference. The IO is very easy to identify as we have shown in Chapter 8 (remember the addition + movement transformation you can perform with IOs). In this very short paragraph, I have given you all you need to know to identify the nominal object complement. In one brief sentence, it is an nominal constituent following the DO which renames the DO. (Note:  Don't confuse OCs with appositives.  We'll take a brief look later at appositives.)

Also, it is worthwhile to take a look at the verbs that can occur with an OC (Nom).  Just as with the OC (Adj), they are quite limited. That is because there is a limited range of relationship between the DO and the OC. Notice our first example, the most famous (or infamous) of OC (Nom) examples: "They crowned Victoria queen." They (subject) crowned (transitive verb—expresses some kind of conveyance, election, appointment) Victoria (DO—receives that which is conveyed, etc.) queen (OC—that which is conveyed, etc.: the office, title, name, etc.).

Our second example is longer; but, with the above guidelines, it is no more difficult.

The students and the faculty (compound subject) have unanimously elected (transitive verb preceded by AUX and modifier) Willy (DO) outstanding male athlete of the year (OC: an NP).

In groups let’s go back to a very simple exercise: write three sentences that contain nominal object complements. Try to make them more complex than just the bare bones.

1.

2.

3.

Chapter 12 Homework Assignment:  Write seven sentences that you have not seen before (especially in this book), demonstrating each of the seven basic sentence patterns.  Provide a set of phrase structure rules for each sentence.  You'll need to know how to do this for the midterm.

Note:  Phrase structure rules look like this for pattern #2:

      John eats apples

S → Subj. + Predicate
Subj. → John
Predicate → V_t + DO
V_t → eats
DO → Apples

Notice that this set of rules says exactly what the phrase structure tree diagram at the beginning of Chapter six says.
If you can't make all the symbols with your computer, you may innovate.  The arrow means "yields."
 

Text Chapter 11
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