Complementation refers to what follows a verb (or adjective/noun) to complete its meaning. In English, verb complementation patterns are largely lexically determined. Each verb selects specific complement types, and these patterns must be learned verb by verb.
Complement Types
That-clauses
- I know that she left.
- He suggested that we wait.
- She believes (that) it will work. (that often omitted in speech)
Common with cognitive verbs (know, think, believe, realise), communication verbs (say, tell, suggest), and emotive verbs (hope, wish, regret).
- She wants to leave.
- He asked me to help.
- They decided to postpone the meeting.
Some verbs take a bare infinitive (without to): She made him leave. / I saw her go.
- I enjoy swimming.
- She avoided answering the question.
- He denied stealing the money.
Wh-clause Complements
- I wonder what she meant.
- She asked where I lived.
- They discussed how to proceed.
Verbs Taking Multiple Patterns
Some verbs accept more than one complement type, sometimes with meaning change:
| Verb | + infinitive | + gerund |
|---|
| remember | Remember to lock the door. (future action) | I remember locking the door. (past action) |
| stop | She stopped to smoke. (purpose) | She stopped smoking. (ceased) |
| try | Try to open it. (attempt) | Try opening it. (experiment) |
| forget | I forgot to call. (didn't do it) | I forgot calling. (don't recall doing it) |
| regret | I regret to inform you. (performative) | I regret telling her. (past action) |
The Learning Burden
Bourke (2005) identified verb complementation as a major pedagogical challenge. The difficulty lies in its lexical specificity:
- No reliable rule predicts which complement a verb takes: enjoy + -ing but want + to-infinitive; suggest + that-clause/-ing but not *suggest + to-infinitive
- L1 transfer: complement patterns rarely correspond across languages. Vietnamese learners may produce *I enjoy to swim by analogy with Vietnamese structure
- Fossilisation: complementation errors persist even at advanced levels because the patterns are stored as individual lexical entries, not derived from general rules
Semantic generalisations offer partial help: verbs referring to actions already happening or completed tend to take -ing (enjoy, finish, avoid); verbs referring to potential or future actions tend to take infinitives (want, decide, hope). But exceptions are numerous.
Teaching Implications
- Teach complementation as part of vocabulary, not grammar: when learning a new verb, learn what follows it
- Use collocations and chunks: decide to, enjoy -ing, suggest that
- Transformation exercises (infinitive to gerund) have limited value; contextualised practice with specific verbs is more effective
- Error correction should focus on high-frequency verbs with commonly confused patterns
- Corpus-based activities with Concordance Lines can help learners notice patterns in authentic data