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##08. NOMINAL COMPLEMENTS:

SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE

COMPLEMENT

verb phrase may include words or phrases which are complements of other nouns
in the sentence rather than complements of the verb, e.g. he looks sick, she became
a lawyer, where “sick” and “a lawyer” are complements of the subjects, and I

painted the chair red, we elected Bill president, where “red” and “president” are
complements to the objects “chair” and “Bill” respectively. We use the traditional terms
“subjective complement” for the former and “objective complement” for the latter.

Subjective Complements

Verbs that take subjective complements are those which express a transformation of the

subject or a state of the subject. Some of the more common Bole verbs of these types are
the following. Such verbs typically have other base meanings. In the definitions below,
the “base” meaning is first and the meaning calling for a subjective complement follows the
semicolon:

boængìru

‘turn around; turn into’

fiowu

‘sit, stay; become’

ê

‘make, do, be done; become’

ma\

‘return; turn into’

Note that Bole does not have direct counterparts to many expressions using subjective
complements in English. For example, English expressions using verbs that relate a
subject to its complement through the senses, such as feel (good), look (sick), sound
(silly), smell (bad), taste (salty) would generally take one of the following forms:

kuæma\ ‘feel’ + nominal

OBJECT

expressing

the sensation that one feels:

kuæma\ zoæi ^he felt good& (zoæi ‘pleasure’)
ita aæ jÏ kuæmeæ kaæwa ^she is feeling shy&

(kaæwa ‘modesty, shyness’)

Unitary verb:

muæskuæfiu ‘feel nauseous’
koælwu ‘feel better’ (after illness)

Equational sentence with a “sense” noun as
subject and a descriptive word as predicate:

ba¥jin otto zoæi ^the food smells good&

(“the odor of the food is pleasant”)

An idiom:

du\tuæ ìdinì ^he doesn&t look happy &

(“he beat his eyes”)

Verbs that take true subjective complements are intransitive (in contrast with the verb

kuæma\ ‘feel’ mentioned above, which is transitive). Evidence for this is that such verbs can
use an intransitive copy pronoun (ICP—§§) together with the subjective complement. By
definition, ICP’s occur only with intransitive verbs. The verb ê ‘become’ seems to require

A

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the ICP when a subjective complement follows.

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For other verbs, the ICP is not

grammatically required. The subjective complement may be a noun or an adjective, though
for verbs with the sense ‘turn into, metamorphose into’, only a noun would be
pragmatically appropriate.

GIMBA: IS THIS RIGHT ABOUT "I"; WHAT HAPPENS IN NEGATIVE?

ê jÏnì so¥ma

‘he became deaf (so¥ma ‘deaf person’)’

aætti ê jÏnì ∫eæneæm soæmsoæm

‘the gruel has fermented’, i.e. ‘the gruel (aætti) has become

sour indeed (∫eæneæm soæmsoæm)’

aæmma ê jÏnì njuæruæl lai

‘the water (aæmma) is very cold (njuæruæl lai)’

o¥shi boængìraj jÏto me¥muæ

‘the goat (o¥shi) turned into a human (me¥muæ)’

me¥muæ ma\ jÏnì zoænge ≠ me¥muæ ma\ zoænge

‘the man has turned into a hyena (zoænge)’

aæ fioæwa jÏnì mbuækuæm ≠ aæ fioæwa mbuækuæm

‘he will become blind (mbuækuæm ‘blind

person’)’

Tonal evidence shows that the syntactic constituency of verb + subjective complement

differs from that of verb + direct object, even though both constructions directly juxtapose
a verb and a noun phrase. Low Tone Raising (LTR—§§)

DOES

apply between a verb and

a direct object, but not between a verb and a subjective complement. In the first example
below, where the verb can only be used intransitively, application of LTR is unacceptable.
In the second and third examples, the reading without LTR is that of intransitive verb +
subjective complement, the reading with LTR is that of a transitive verb + direct object.

aæ fioæwa mbuækuæm

≠

•aæ fioæwa mbukuæm ‘he will become blind (mbuækuæm ‘blind person’)’

me¥muæ aæ bongiro o¥shi

‘the man turns into a goat’

me¥muæ aæ bongiro o\shi

‘the man turns the goat around’

(This contrast would not be available for a construction with overt ICP, which could not
take a grammatical direct object.)

Some constructions optionally allow a subjective complement to be part of a phrase

introduced by bo¥ ‘in the guise of, in the capacity of’ (cf. use of this word below with

OBJECTIVE

complements). This does not seem to be possible for the verb ê ‘become’, and

it is not required with any verb.

me¥muæ ma\ jÏnì bo¥ zoænge ≠ me¥muæ ma\ bo¥ zoænge ‘the man has turned into a hyena’
boænguæru\jÏnì (bo¥) zoænge ≠ boængìru\ (bo¥) zoænge

‘he turned into a hyena’

We draw attention here also to a construction akin to sentences with subjective

complements, viz. sentences where an intransitive verb is accompanied by an ideophone
which comments on the state of the subject.

mbormi poæ&&u\ jÏnì kaækkìfiaæk

‘the ebony fruit dried up and became hard’

ebony

dry

ICP

ideophone

kulaæ

toæ∫∫u

porot

‘the calabash has a hole in it’

calabash be-pierced

ideophone

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Without the ICP, the tendency would be to interpret the verb ê in its transitive sense ‘make, do’, i.e. ê

so¥ma would be interpreted ‘he made a deaf person’, not ‘he became deaf’. Subjective complements after ê
must be distinguished from transitive ê followed by a quality word. Thus, in ta\saæ eme\ ê kumbe ‘this
bowl is too small’ (‘bowl this does [ê] contrictedness [kumbe]’), the word kumbe ‘constrictedness’ is not
a subjective complement because it is a noun, not an adjective describing a quality of the bowl or a noun
stating something that the bowl has become.

3

sa¥roæ baækku\ jÏnì murus

‘the grass burned to a crisp’

grass

burn

ICP

ideophone

Such sentences are unlike sentences with straightforward subjective complements, first,
because the ideophone seems to be as much a descriptor of the verb as of the subject, and
second, because, unlike words that appear as subjective complements, the ideophone could
not be the predicate of an equational sentence (§§), directly equating the subject and the
predicate.

GIMBA: IS THIS RIGHT?

Objective Complements (“Small Clauses”)

GIMBA: THE WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS BELOW ARE FROM GADAKA
(questionnaire, p. 3b). CHECK TO SEE IF THEY ARE OK

Verbs that take objective complements will be transitive verbs of two general sorts,

listed with exemplary verbs from Bole:

Verbs

that

create

a

relationship

between

and

object

and

its complement

fiÏlu

‘install, turban (a chief)’

e¥su

‘call (someone something)’

ê

‘make (into)’ (cf. intrasitive use of this verb to mean ‘become’)

ma¥tu

‘change to, turn into’ (cf. ma\ ‘turn into, become’)

(G) ndolu ‘want’

Verbs

of

discovery

or

perception

of a

relation

ship

between

and

object

and

its

complement

bolu

‘find, come across’

deyu ‘leave’
ìnna\

‘see’

Verbs involving a transformation of the object, at least optionally, can usually use a

phrase with bo¥ ‘in the capacity of, in the guise of’ as the objective complement. It is
possible that there are actually two syntactic constructions, viz. those with a direct object
and an objective complement and those where the apparent object is actually the

SUBJECT

of

a complement clause like I saw

that

THE GOAT

was tied

u

p

. This clausal structure would be

semantically possible only with the second group of verbs, which do

NOT

use a bo¥ phrase.

Note, however, that for

ALL

these verbs, a pronominal object is a clitic on the verb, not a

free pronoun, showing that even if object + complement is an underlying clause, the
complement subject has been “raised” to become grammatical object when it is a pronoun.

fiÏlan AÆborì bo¥ Moi

‘they have installed Abori as Moi’

fiÏlan-nì-n bo¥ wokkìl moi

‘they made him (nì) the chief’s representative’

aæ jÏ e¥saæ Bamoi (•bo¥) an shiri

‘they are calling Bamoi a thief (an shiri)’

ma¥tantuæn boæno ye (bo¥) pe¥tìlaæ

‘they painted the house white’

an guæwa ê kaæsìkaær ye (•bo¥) gaæraΩ ‘the blacksmith made the sword long’
(G) ndol-ka\ bo¥ so\baæ

‘he want you as a friend’

dewu o¥shi ye ngoæratoæ

‘he left the goat tied up’

dei-ta\ ngoæratoæ

‘he left her (ta\) tied up’

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næ ìnna\ kuære¥fiì ye gaændaænì me¥le¥le¥

‘I saw the snake lying (gaændaænì) stretched out (me¥le¥le¥)’

GIMBA

they found me well-fed (bolu + something that can be call objective complement
all types with both pro and noun DO
"I want him/Bamoi as a friend"
he divided the kola into two (cf. tìkkuwo¥ bo¥ boælou ^he divided into two&)
Bamoi wants Lengi as a wife
she made the paper into a fan

What happens with V + complement where LTR could potentially take place?

they will call her X
they will make her X

Akin to objective complements are constructions involving ideophones such as the

following, parallel to those with nominal complements (see end of preceding section).

ka zuæma\-tuæ kok-ko ku\lì-ku\lì

‘you shaved your head bald’

you shave-tot

head-your ideophone

ngor-tu¥ wula

taitai

‘he tied the load securely’

tie-tot

load

ideophone

oæssu\

bìfiiki ndalar

‘he ground the flour to a soft consistency’

ground flour

ideophone

As with sentences having ideophones as “pseudo-subjective complements”, such sentences
differ from sentences with straightforward objective complements, first, because the
ideophone seems to describe the action or state of the entire verb + object, and second,
because, unlike words that appear as objective complements, the ideophone could not be
the predicate of an equational sentence (§§), directly equating the noun which appears as
grammatical and the predicate.