Introduction

We have seen that in a given clause the verb can be regarded as the head, controlling the other major phrases. Two sets of concepts bear on the relationship between the verb in a clause and its complements; one is the set of grammatical functions or grammatical relations, that is, subject, direct object, indirect object/second object and oblique object, and the other is the set of roles such as Agent and Patient. The first three terms used to be familiar to anyone who studied any of the foreign languages normally offered in British schools – French, German, Spanish, Latin, Russian. They are in constant use in grammars of languages from every part of the world and have been deployed for centuries in the study of European languages, yet it turns out to be far from straightforward to define the concepts, and it has yet to be determined whether they apply to languages which differ greatly from English in their grammar.