COMPATIBILITY

1. (Semantics) In this study, semantic compatibility between two or more linguistic components is defined as the following: The prototypical semantic specifications of the two linguistic components must be conceptually consistent (Yoon 2012). For the prototypical semantic specification in this definition, I adopt the prototype model (Rosch 1977) in which a category is defined with reference of a prototype, i.e. a schematized representation of typical instances (Langacker 1988). Therefore, when I discuss the semantic compatibility between a construction and various verbs, I compare the prototypical semantics of the construction and the verbs when they are abstracted from specific instances. | Soyeon Yoon, 2013
2. (Syntax) Commonly understood as the ability of a word to be combined in a sentence with certain elements, both subordinate (kernel connection) and non-subordinate to it, and where it itself acts as a subordinate element (adjunct connection). | O. Yu. Zaitseva, O. V. Gvozd, and Yu. L. Dobrovolska, 2023
3. (Syntax) Compatibility is the main feature of language units based on syntagmatic relations. Syntagmatic relations is the capacity of language units to link to one another in a speech sequence as a part of the text, sentence, words in accordance with the laws of language. Compatibility is a linguistic category spread in every area of language. The rule that holds "combinability is the combination of words with words, sentence with sentence" is stereotypical and recognized only at the grammatical level. Sounds in the language have the capability to be combined or not to be combined with each other. Affixes are attached to the root differentially under the laws of language. Words are also combined with each other depending on the content plane and the expression plane. To the extent that this is true, the compatibility phenomenon is the category that plays a significant role in determining phonetic, lexical, morphological, syntactic laws of the language. | Amirbekova Aigul Baydebekkyzy, Khabiyeva Almagul, Soltanbekova Alfia, and Taubaldiyev Meirambek, 2019
4. (Lexicology) According to Kotyolova (1975), the lexical compatibility is the ability of a word (as a lexeme) to collocate with other words (also as lexemes) and the total sum of its lexical valencies. Other authors define it as the ability of a word to collocate syntactically with words from a limited list, i.e. the ability to generally combine with a limited number of words, irrespective of its function in speech. | Margareta Morarescu, 2007
5. (Dialectology) A synchronic dialectological concept that operates on the lexical level. It assesses the degree of lexical relationship that exists between two or more varieties of a given language at a given time irrespective of geography; that is, it "analyzes the 'synchronic consequences' of ... partial differences within a framework of partial similarity."
    Compatibility differs from synonymity in that its domain of operation is much wider, for it comprehends lexical items of a given variety and their equivalents in one or more other varieties. Synonymity, on the other hand, is restricted to lexical items and their equivalents in one and the same variety. For example, the English gloss 'lemons' has in the Tripoli variety of Arabic two words: /mrạ́ːkbe/ and /hạ́ːmụD/. These items are considered synonymous in Tripoli Arabic (Tp). The Sidonese variety of Arabic (Sd), however, has the equivalent /laymuːn/. These equivalent lexical items, namely, Tp /mrạ́ːkbe/, /hạ́ːmụD/ and Sd /laymuːn/, are assessed as compatible with each other since they mean 'lemons' in the varieties in which they occur. Such a group of two or more equivalent items is called a set of compatible items.
    Compatibility depends completely on meaning for the isolation of sets of compatible items, for lexical items are compatible if they have the same meaning. However, sets of compatible items can be subclassed according to formal criteria (i.e., whether they are the same in form or not). Thus, two or more items that are the same in meaning but different in form, such as Tp /hạ́ːmụD/ and Sd /laymuːn/ 'lemons', are contrastive; items that agree in both meaning and form, such as Tyrean Arabic (Ty) /zunnạ́ːr/ and Beiruti (Ashrafiyyah) (Ba) /zinnạ́ːr/ 'belt', are noncontrastive.
    A noncontrastive set of compatible items comprises cognates that may be isolated by the application of the comparative method. However, a contrastive set of compatible items includes noncognates and asymmetrical cognates.
    Compatibility operates on a synchronic level. | Frederic J. Cadora, 1966
6. (Examples)
    ○ A more detailed examination of Slavic phonological systems confirms that the preservation of the Hebrew name דָּוִד 'David' cannot be adequately explained by phonotactic compatibility alone. While it is true that the consonantal structure d-v-d does not violate Slavic phonological constraints, this fact is insufficient as an explanatory principle. Numerous loanwords that are equally compatible with Slavic phonotactics nevertheless undergo systematic adaptation, including vowel modification, consonantal substitution, or prosodic restructuring. | Željko Stanojević, 2026
    ○ Studies of internet graphic communication argue that Latin letters co-exist with abbreviations, mixed-code strings and visually motivated signs that compensate for tone and gesture in fast interaction (Komilov 2020). At the same time, phonetic compatibility and perception guide which borrowed forms stabilize: cross-linguistic phonetic differences can yield spelling variation until communities converge on the most recognizable and typable solutions (Islomov 2025). | Komilov Javokhir, 2026
    ○ Vietnamese (Austro-Asiatic; Vietnam) is a wh-in-situ language. All the wh-expressions (except for the subject 'who' and 'why') are restricted to the clause-internal position and are banned from being clause-external. The 'when' questions behave differently. The 'when'-expression is compatible with both the clause-internal and clause-external positions.
    T heads have temporal features that need to be checked. The 'when'-expression is base-generated in a non-temporal projection. It then moves up to check the feature of the T head. Feature compatibility is required for checking. | Thủy-Thương (Beryl) Bùi, 2026
    ○ Adaptations like English Gertrude becoming Klingon (constructed) ghertlhuD demonstrate phonological transformation, where Klingon's alveolar lateral affricates replace English consonant clusters to align with Klingon phonotactics. Similarly, vowel epenthesis and consonant substitutions ensure Klingon phonological compatibility, balancing "alien-ness" with reader accessibility. | Chiara Meluzzi, 2025
    ○ Lexical misuse or semantic error is the incorrect use of words in speech or writing, generally related to meaning, connotation, collocation or grammatical compatibility. Lexical misuse includes semantic error, that is the use of a word whose meaning opposes the speaker's intention. | Laura-Ionela Ionică, 2025
    ○ This paradigm was a morphological compatibility decision task with a total of two paragraphs. Each paragraph consisted of seven sentences suitable for Turkish written linguistic structure; five sentences in each paragraph had a blank space inside. At the top of each paragraph, target words derived from the same root with proper suffixes (e.g., göz, gözlük, gözlüğüm etc.) fitting the blanks in that paragraph were presented in mixed order. | Tevhide Kargin, Birkan Guldenoglu, Hilal Gengec, and Merih Toker, 2023
    ○ An effective solution to the task of identifying idiomatic expressions calls for the ability to relate the meaning of its component words with each other (e.g., Baldwin 2005, McCarthy et al. 2007) as well as with the context (Liu and Hwa 2019). This aligns with the widely upheld psycholinguistic findings on human processing of a phrase's figurative meaning in comparison with its literal interpretation (Bobrow and Bell 1973). Toward this end, we rely on the contextualized representation of a potential idiomatic expression (PIE, accounting both for its internal and contextual properties), hypothesizing that a figurative expression's contextualized representation should be different from that of its literal counterpart. We refer to this as its semantic compatibility (SC)—if a PIE is semantically compatible with its context, then it is literal; if not, it is figurative. The idea of SC also captures the distinction between literal word combinations and idioms, in terms of the semantics encoded by both (Jaeger 1999) and the related property of selectional preference (Wilks 1975)—the tendency for a word to semantically select or constrain which other words may appear in its association (Katz and Fodor 1963). | Ziheng Zeng and Suma Bhat, 2021
    ○ The structure of the field is formed by peripheral zones, and the one closest to the center is generated by a direct semantic connection with the semantic core. All subsequent zones are based on the connections with the previous layers. Mikhalyov (1995) applied the six-step rule formulated by Karaulov (1981), according to which, the connection between two randomly chosen words can be established through no more than five intermediate words, corresponding to the six steps. Applying this rule to a phonosemantic field, Mikhalyov (1995) showed the stability and strength of internal semantic connections. Thus, in analyzing semantic compatibility, one should also study the connectivity between words that occur together in the texts, considering the distance from the sixth step to the center—the word with the highest frequency. | Vladimir Pavlovich Klochkov, Galina Raisovna Rybakova, Natalya Olegovna Vasileva, Tatiana Viktorovna Malkova, and Irina Vladimirovna Krotova, 2019
    ○ The article deals with the structural and functional-semantic features of the portmanteau words of English origin in Modern German. The borders of this linguistic blending depend on semantic relations between initial parts of the contamination and their phonetic compatibility. | Kudrikova and Dyakov, 2016
    ○ We conducted two experiments to examine the role of syntactic, lexical and contextual factors on the interpretation of idiomatic expressions. Experiment 1 examines the role of syntactic compatibility and lexical compatibility on the real-time processing of potentially idiomatic strings. Experiment 2 examines the role of contextual information on idiom processing and how context interacts with lexical information during processing. | Edward Holsinger, 2013
    ○ The software layer of SAMA 3.1 relies on a data layer that consists primarily of three Arabic-English lexicon files: prefixes (1,328 entries), suffixes (945 entries), and stems (79,318 entries representing 40,654 lemmas). The lexicons are supplemented by three morphological compatibility tables used for controlling prefix-stem combinations (2,497 entries), stem-suffix combinations (1,632 entries), and prefix-suffix combinations (1,180 entries). | Mohamed Maamouri, David Graff, Basma Bouziri, Sondos Krouna, Ann Bies, and Seth Kulick, 2010
    ○ Stress patterns of English and perceptual pattern of the six Vietnamese (Austroasiatic; Vietnam) tones were compared (Vietnamese assigns one tone to each syllable). The analysis of Vietnamese tones immediately preceding code-switching reveals that there is a statistically significant proportion of the high tone group at the point of switching. This fact, together with the perceptually phonological compatibility between Vietnamese tones of high and mid-level pitch and English stressed vs. unstressed syllables, suggests that code-switching tends to be facilitated by the mid-level to high pitch Vietnamese tones. | Tuc Ho-Dac, 1997

COMPETENCE

1. (Psycholinguistics) Three types of competencies, namely linguistic competence, communicative competence, and interactional competence, have had significant influence on second language teaching, learning and testing research and practice (Thornbury 2006, Young 2011). The theory of linguistic competence was proposed by Noam Chomsky, one of the most prominent linguists of the 20th century, and his theory revolutionized the arena of theoretical linguistics (Barman 2014). In its simplest form, linguistic competence is defined as the native speakers' ability to formulate "well-formed sentences" (Thornbury 2006). However, Chomsky's theory of linguistic competence was, quite naturally, called into question on a number of counts.
    Dell Hymes introduced the theory of communicative competence (Young 2008). In line with Hymes's ideas, Saville-Troike (2003/2008) states that communicative competence involves not only the knowledge of a language, but also what message to communicate to whom, and how to communicate it appropriately in any particular context, and that it also involves the socio-cultural knowledge that enables speakers to use and understand different speech forms.
    On the heels of communicative competence came the notion of interactional competence which was first introduced by Claire Kramsch (1986; Walsh 2012). Interactional competence takes the position that "abilities, actions, and activities" are not owned by a single individual participating in the process of communication, but are cooperatively constructed by everyone involved in the talk (Young 2013).
    A range of articles has already discussed the three types of competencies mentioned above (e.g. Bagarić and Djigunović 2007, Barman 2014, Fauziati 2015, Kamiya 2006, Saleh 2003, Sun 2014, Taha and Reishaan 2008, Yano 2003). | Nishad Abdulrahman and Emad A. S. Abu-Ayyash, 2019
2. (Psycholinguistics) One of the basic assumptions made by Chomsky in the construction of his theory in the 1960s was the characterization of language as being composed of competence and performance, in principle quite resembling Saussure's (1916/1959) distinction between "langue" and "parole". The notion of competence was actually introduced in the following well-known and commonly quoted paragraph:

   Linguistic theory is primarily concerned with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance. (Chomsky 1965/2014)

    | Enric Llurda, 2007
3. (Psycholinguistics) Each speaker must have a mechanism, or system of processes or principles, that produces knowledge of items of English. It is just this that a speaker of English has and someone who does not know English does not have. This system, whatever it is, that produces linguistic knowledge on demand, is what Chomsky called linguistic competence, and this is what the grammar of a language attempts to characterize. | John Tienson, 1983
4. (Psycholinguistics) The term competence has been used so widely and so divergently in so many different contexts that it has ceased to have any precise meaning. Different writers interpret it in different ways for different purposes. As a result there is great confusion about what the term refers to in any given instance. Writers frequently discuss the concept without taking into account the fact that interpretations of it differ greatly.
    A confusion between state and process is noted in extended applications of the term. It is suggested that making a clear distinction between "competence" and "proficiency" helps to resolve many difficulties. | David S. Taylor, 1988
5. (Semantics) Competence in Cognitive Semantics is the language users' ability to adequately construct and fully understand expressions by means of language itself and additional resources such as memory, intentionality, general knowledge, etc. Competence also includes our ability to make abstractions, which allow us to conceive of words in isolation. Yet, it is important to point out that this is secondary to meanings in context in that it is a process starting in the various usage events, and as the word "process" indicates it is a result of language use and is dynamic in nature. This definition is in stark contrast to most generative definitions, in which the scope is narrowed down to the enumeration of fixed senses that apply in well-formed sentences.
    The answer to whether it is possible to pin down linguistic competence as it is understood in the generative school of thought is no. The reason is that it is not possible to make an absolute distinction between linguistic knowledge and encyclopaedic knowledge. | Carita Paradis, 2003
6. (Examples)
    ○ Chomsky's distinction between linguistic competence and performance was considered mostly empirical by many others since it underestimates the significant aspects of language use, psychological data, discourse, sociocultural perspectives, non-verbal communication, and the speaker's intentions—all of which soon became research topics by pragmatists under the title pragmatic competence. | İsmail Erton, 2017
    ○ Chomsky has tried to clarify the subject matter of linguistics. On this level, the key notions are those of a generative grammar and of the speaker's linguistic competence. A particular grammar is seen as a description of, or a theory about, the competence of speakers of a particular language. A theory of grammar is seen as a theory about the form of linguistic competence in general. | P.H. Matthews, 1979/2014
    ○ In its Chomskian usage, competence is ahistorical and asocial and at the same time the fundamental object of study for linguistics. | Jack Sidnell, 1999
    ○ An abundance of research has addressed the limitations of the Chomskyan concept of knowing language by asserting the importance of the socio-cultural aspects of language use (Gumperz 1965/1971, Hymes 1972, Schmidt and Richards 1980, Fraser et al. 1980). Such research has shown that in addition to linguistic or grammatical competence (a knowledge of the syntax, phonology, and vocabulary of a language), language users must also possess pragmatic competence (a knowledge of how to use the language appropriately) to communicate effectively. | Sheila Hoffman-Hicks, 1992
    ○ The case for an autonomous linguistic competence has received support from the fact that (in extraordinary cases) linguistic abilities may be dissociated developmentally from other cognitive abilities. For example, there are cases on record of children whose syntax is completely fluent, yet who are unable to use language communicatively; conversely cases are attested in which a child's communicative intent is obvious, yet that intent cannot be phrased according to the grammatical patterns of the language being acquired. | Ellen F. Prince, 1988

COMPETITION

1. (Psycholinguistics) An effect which arises in the task of selecting an intended unit from among a number of elements concurrently activated in the processing network. The audible and visible outcome of the selection process is language use. Language structure is the prerequisite for competition in that it provides the set of competitors. When competition is low, consistent (i.e., invariant) language use emerges. When competition is high, language use is variable, i.e., synchronic variation occurs. When competition changes over time, language change takes place. Thus, it is language processing in general and competition in particular that constrains and binds together many phenomena of language use, structure, variation, and change. | Thomas Berg, 2014
2. (Morphosyntax) The symmetrical view of the morphology-syntax interface is presented by Ackema and Neeleman (2001, 2004). They assume that morphology and syntax are parallel generative systems and thus compete for structural realization; in this sense, there is no asymmetry between these modules. Based on this assumption, Ackema and Neeleman develop a theory that hypothesizes that an unmarked realization form of a structure is parameterized in terms of either morphology or syntax, depending on which is more prominent in a given language. | Kazuya Nishimaki, 2014
3. (Examples)
    ○ The cross language identity effect means that bilingual speakers name pictures faster when they are presented with a distractor word that coresponds to the target's translation than when it is an unrelated word. This is a paradox for Santesteban and Schwieter (2020), but in Relational Network Theory (RNT) it is just the regular state of the system. A conceptual node is not purely linguistic, so it can be activated by any other modality. In this type of experiment, there is one conceptual node being activated via several pathways: a visual one (the image of a dog) and two linguistic ones (the subnetworks for English dog and Spanish perro). It is natural that this node will trigger activation in a production subnetwork faster than in a situation in which there is a competitor conceptual node being activated. In RNT, we can show that there is an important difference between a non target distractor being a translation equivalent or a different word. The translation equivalent shares part of the network with the target word because they are linked to the same conceptual representation, whereas a different word would activate a totally different subnetwork. | Paul Buzilă, 2024
    ○ A complete theory of scalar implicature involves two components. First, one needs to describe a system predicting which inferences are generated by the competition between a given sentence and a given set of alternatives. This has been the subject of much research (Horn 1972, Gazdar 1979, Gamut 1991, Chierchia et al. 2012). | Brian Buccola, Manuel Križ, and Emmanuel Chemla, 2021
    ○ Complementary distribution is a consequence of a general principle of evolutionary biology, competitive exclusion, which further provides a uniform account of both allomorphic variation and the rivalry between affixes in terms of competition for distributional resources. The distribution of inflectional competitors is a type of spatial partitioning, restricted by the morphosyntactic system of a language, while derivational rivals benefit from having to name externally driven concepts. The English suffixes -ce, -cy, and -ntial are analyzed in detail as examples of competition for distribution. | Mark Aronoff, 2019
    ○ During language processing, bilinguals may experience simultaneous activation of both languages, or parallel activation. Parallel activation of the two languages may increase overall cognitive load as competition from an irrelevant language is overcome (e.g., Blumenfeld and Marian 2013, Freeman, Shook, and Marian 2016, Kroll and Bialystok 2013, Kroll, Bobb, Misra, and Guo 2008, Linck, Hoshino, and Kroll 2008). For example, bilinguals access both within- and between-language competitor words during auditory comprehension and have to inhibit irrelevant words across languages (e.g., plug activates plum and plancha 'iron' for a Spanish-English bilingual; Blumenfeld and Marian 2013). In contrast, when monolinguals hear plug, they may activate multiple competing words within the same language only (e.g., phonological competitor plum; e.g., Blumenfeld and Marian 2011, Tanenhaus, Spivey-Knowlton, Eberhard, and Sedivy 1995). Therefore, bilinguals may rely on cognitive control during language processing to inhibit not only within-, but also between-language interference in order to select the target word (e.g., Blumenfeld and Marian 2011, 2013, Giezen, Blumenfeld, Shook, Marian, and Emmorey 2015, Mercier, Pivneva, and Titone 2014). | Max R. Freeman, Henrike K. Blumenfeld, and Viorica Marian, 2017
    ○ Smith and Wheeldon (2004) showed that in picture descriptions in which two nouns were required, participants took longer to plan their utterances when descriptions included conceptually similar nouns (e.g., saw and axe in planning the saw and the axe move together), compared to conceptually dissimilar nouns (saw and cat). They suggested that the temporal overlap in accessing the nouns gives rise to interference or competition between these words during phrase planning. | Silvia P. Gennaria, Jelena Mirkovia, and Maryellen C. MacDonald, 2012
    ○ We propose a new information theoretic method for competitive learning and apply it to a problem of linguistic rule acquisition. The new method can contribute to neural computing from three perspectives:
   1. It is a competitive learning method that can directly control competitive unit activation patterns.
   2. Competition is realized by maximizing information in competitive units.
   3. The method can provide a tool and guiding principles to simulate a process of language acquisition.
   
    | Ryotaro Kamimura, Taeko Kamimura, and Thomas R. Shultz, 2001

COMPETITION MODEL

1. (Psycholinguistics) Portrays the idea that mental processing is competitive in the classical Darwinian sense. If we consider the biological world, we realize that each species is attached to a particular niche or habitat. In that niche, each member while cooperating in the competition against other species, competes with other members of its species. The abilities and tendencies of competing species, of predators, and of species that serve as food sources tightly control the habitat of them. The mental world also echoes the same tight, interlocking dependency, as MacWhinney (1986) suggests. As far as perception is concerned, many ideas are called to the mind, but few are chosen. The final perception of a situation is determined by those constructs which, together, most successfully matched the stimulus. The ideas can win out only if they are in harmony with the other ideas in that particular context.
    Cooperation causes a percept or an action to gain strength over the other actions with which it is interrelated. The better it matches other ideas, the more an idea can win out over its competitors. According to what MacWhinney (1986) believes, competition is forever connected with cooperation. The same phenomenon is detected in language processing: here the unit of competition is not the species or the individual, but the lexical item. The domain of each word is formed by the related meanings and sounds and by the range of responses of the lexical items with which it competes. During sentence processing, each lexical item sets up expectations for other lexical items.
    When processing is successful, these expectations interlock tightly. Yet, as in natural systems, there is always some variation in the system which can sometimes result in the occurrence of errors. | Farid Ghaemi and Mastaneh Haghani, 2011
2. (Psycholinguistics) The main idea underlying the Competition Model is that mental processing involves a continual decision-making process in which there are many possible candidates competing for each categorization decision and the language user must be able to evaluate the candidacy of each alternative in terms of the cues that support it. In the Competition Model, the process of language learning is usually understood in terms of ways in which the learner comes to adapt his behavior to conform increasingly more closely to the actual way in which cues function in the environment. I will not provide a complete characterization of the Competition Model here, instead referring the reader to the papers on the subject in MacWhinney (1987) and MacWhinney and Bates (in press). | Brian MacWhinney, 1989
3. (Example)
    ○ The Competition Model is a framework for the crosslinguistic study of language use. It is designed to capture facts about the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language by real human beings, across a variety of qualitatively and quantitatively distinct language types.
    The Competition Model is more compatible with functional/cognitive grammars.
    The Competition Model looks closely at relations between the environment and the functioning of the organism.
    The Competition Model does not posit the simple sorts of relations between communicative function and language proposed by Skinner (1957/2020), neither does it accept the total divorce of language from communicative function embodied in Chomskian linguistics. Instead, it considers the relation between language form and language function as the major empirical phenomenon to be characterized by psycholinguistic theory.
    The Competition Model only rejects the most extreme forms of linguistic determinism. These extreme forms deny the possibility of universals of cognitive and communicative functioning. Weaker forms of linguistic determinism, such as those discussed in Osgood and Sebeok (1965) or Bowerman (1985), are compatible with the Competition Model.
    A central claim in the Competition Model is that forms often express a variety of correlated functions. This "peaceful coexistence" of functions helps both the listener and the hearer by allowing a small set of structures and markers to serve a myriad of related purposes.
    The emphasis in the Competition Model on probabilistic rules does not mean that we ignore the powerful laws that separate one language from another.
    Given the fundamental indeterminism of physical reality, the Competition Model can be viewed as the psycholinguistic analog to quantum theory in physics.
    The Competition Model attributes the ability to omit pronouns to the presence of clear subject marking on the verb.
    In the Competition Model, language acquisition is characterized as cue-driven distributional analysis.
    Chien and Lust (1985) devised an interesting experimental test of the functionalist claims of the Competition Model.
    The Competition Model does have nonlinear mechanisms that allow for abrupt transitions when they occur, but it can also account for the much more general phenomenon of gradual, statistically driven change.
    In the Competition Model the mapping between form and function is stated as directly as possible—in two layers or with intervening layers that are the minimum required for learning in a particular language.
    The major predictive construct in the Competition Model is cue validity.
    The Competition Model has been applied successfully to language breakdown in adult aphasics (Bates and Wulfeck 1989) and to sentence processing in bilinguals (Kilborn and Ito 1989). | Elizabeth Bates and Brian McWhinney, 1989

COMPLEMENT

1. (Syntax) The present study concerns itself with biclausal syntactic constructions in which the predicate of one clause "entails reference to another proposition or state of affairs" (Cristofaro 2003) that is expressed in a second clause. For example, the English predicate want denotes a mental activity that is inherently directed at, and hence entails reference to, another state of affairs:
   1.  I want [ to buy a new car ].
   
    This linguistic phenomenon goes by the name of complementation, and perhaps the most common way of framing the issue is by saying that "a predication" comes to function as "an argument of a predicate" (Noonan 2007).
    The example in (1) may be characterized in grammatical terms as a complement sentence (following Cristofaro 2008) involving a complement-taking predicate (henceforth CTP, following Noonan 2007) and a complement clause, the bracketed part of (1). | Karsten Schmidtke-Bode, 2014
2. (Syntax) Phrases expanding notions inherent in the predicate are considered to be complements (Gibson 1973). Phrases which are expansions of the inflectional person categories of the predicate are also complements. In Secwepmctsín, phrases and clauses which complete predicative notions occur as complements introduced by 'ʔes'.
    Complements can be differentiated according to the following properties:
   1. A subjective complement immediately precedes or follows the predicate.
   2. An objective complement follows the predicate, and occurs after the subject if it also follows the predicate.
   
    (Gibson 1973) | INLP Linguistic Glossary
3. (Syntax) YP in (1).
   1.  [ _H′ H YP ]
       where H is a head and H′ the projection of H.
   
    According to X-bar theory, the complement of a head X⁰ is defined either as a position attached or adjoined to X′, or as a sister of X⁰. Thus, in configuration (2), either A and B are complements of X⁰, or just B (the sister of X⁰).

   2.       X′
           / \
          /   \     
         A     X′
              / \
             /   \	
            B     X⁰
      

    Sometimes, the complement of a head X⁰ is equated with its internal argument(s). Chomsky 1981/1993, 1986, Williams 1980) | Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics, 2001
4. (Grammar) In many modern grammars (for instance in those that build on the X-bar schema), the object argument of a verbal predicate is called a complement. In fact, this use of the term is the one that currently dominates in linguistics. A main aspect of this understanding of complements is that the subject is usually not a complement of the predicate. (For examples of this "narrow" understanding of complements, see, for instance, Lester 1971, Horrocks (1987, Borsley 1991, Cowper 1992, Burton-Roberts 1997, Fromkin et al. 2000).
   1. He wiped the counter.
      The NP the counter is the object complement of the verb wiped.
   2. She scoured the tub.
      The NP the tub is the object complement of the verb scoured.
   
    Construed in the broadest sense, any time a given expression is somehow necessary in order to render another expression "complete", it can be characterized as a complement of that expression. (See Radford 2004 for an explanation of complements along these lines.)
   3. with the class
      The noun phrase the class is the complement of the preposition, with.
   4. Jim will help.
      The main verb help is the complement of the auxiliary verb, will.
   5. Chris gave up.
      The particle up is the complement of the verb gave.
   6. as a friend
      The noun phrase a friend is the complement of the preposition, as.
   
    | Wikipedia, 2026
5. (Example)
    ○ In many languages, certain verbs—notably see, hear, know, believe, like, and often also tell and want—can take a clause, instead of an NP, as a core argument. This is called a complement clause. To quote examples from English:
   1. I believe [ John's denial ]_O
      where the NP John's denial is the O (object) argument of believe.
   2. I believe that < that John did not do it >_O
      where the complement clause that John did not do it is the O argument.
   
    | R.M.W. Dixon, 2006

COMPLEMENT-DESCENDING GENERALIZATION

1. (Syntax) 

   Complement-Descending Generalization
   In head-initial structures, c-selected and non-agreed phrases may only merge as complements or in descending structures.

    | Philip Shushurin, 2025
2. (Syntax) In the Russian noun phrase, which is head-initial, (non-adjectival) dependents generally exhibit ascending orders, i.e. high arguments follow low arguments, as in (1), with one major exception: non-possessor / author genitives must be adjacent to the nominal head, as in (2), irrespective of the properties of other dependents.
   1. kommentarij
      comment.NOM

      k
      to

      Sankhja-karike
      Sankhyakarika.DAT

      Gaudapady
      Gaudapada.GEN

      'Gaudapada's comment to Sankhyakarika'
   2. torgovlja
      trade.NOM

      angličan
      English.people.GEN

      opiumom
      opium.INS

      'English people's trade in opium' (or, 'opium trade run by the English')
   
    I will show that the pattern in (1-2) constitutes a genuine counterexample to Janke and Neeleman's (2010/2012) and Belk and Neeleman's (2017) Case Adjacency account, which suggests that Object Adjacency effects are driven by the case computation. I formulate a novel generalization, the Complement-Descending Generalization, according to which in head-initial structures, c-selected and non-agreed phrases may only merge as complements to the head or in descending structures. Such effects are notably absent in head-final structures.
    This account successfully explains traditional object adjacency effects and can be extended to encompass further phenomena, such as Adjectival Adjacency, as well as some other left-right asymmetries. | ?, ?

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