Literary notes about Complement (AI summary)
The term "complement" is employed in literature not only to fulfill a technical grammatical role but also to express the idea of completeness or balance in various contexts. In linguistic studies, it often designates a word or clause necessary to complete a sentence’s structure or meaning [1][2][3]. At the same time, writers use the term metaphorically to describe elements that complete or perfect a larger whole, such as a ship’s crew or a partner in life, thereby underscoring unity and interdependence [4][5][6]. This dual usage, evident in both grammatical analysis and artistic narrative, enriches the text by providing a precise technical function alongside a broader, more symbolic notion of full measure or essential accompaniment [7][8].
- Two or more successively subordinate clauses, forming one complex clause, may be joined to the main clause as a modifier or complement.
— from An Advanced English Grammar with Exercises by Frank Edgar Farley and George Lyman Kittredge - 1 Co. 10.26, 28; complement, full extent, full number, Ga. 4.4.
— from A Greek-English Lexicon to the New Testament by William Greenfield - Here gentleman (a complement in the main clause) is modified by the adjective clause who was born in the village ( a ).
— from An Advanced English Grammar with Exercises by Frank Edgar Farley and George Lyman Kittredge - [192] There was not a single ship of Suffren's which had more than three-fourths of her regular complement of men.
— from The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 by A. T. Mahan - She had the potent, dark stream of her own blood, she had the glimmering core of fecundity, she had her mate, her complement, her sharer in fruition.
— from The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence - But the ship, having her full complement of seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father’s influence could prevail.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville - The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.
— from The Communist Manifesto by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx - But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.
— from The Communist Manifesto by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx
