Défense du complément circonstanciel

Abstract

This article confronts two ways of analyzing verb complements in school grammars: the traditional analysis in terms of object and “circumstancial” complements and the analysis as verb (essential) and sentence (non essential) complements of what is called “new grammar”. It casts a critical view on the new grammar point of view and defends that of traditional grammar, by showing in particular that, provided one does not distort the original definition, it implements an analysis technique which conforms to standard methods in modern linguistics.

Keywords

• school grammar
• complement types
• object
• adjunct
• adverbial phrase
• linguistic tests