modifier of a verb or verbal to name the person or thing for whose
benefit an action is performed.

Examples of direct and indirect objects are, direct, "She seldom saw
her _course_ at a glance;" indirect, "I give _thee_ this to wear at
the collar."

[Sidenote: _Complement_:]

344. A complement is a word added to a verb of incomplete
predication to complete its meaning.

Notice that a verb of incomplete predication may be of two
kinds,--transitive and intransitive.

[Sidenote: _Of a transitive verb_.]

The _transitive verb_ often requires, in addition to the object, a
word to define fully the action that is exerted upon the object; for
example, "Ye call me chief." Here the verb _call_ has an object _me_
(if we leave out _chief_), and means summoned; but _chief_ belongs to
the verb, and _me_ here is not the object simply of _call_, but of
_call chief_, just as if to say, "Ye _honor me_." This word completing
a transitive verb is sometimes called a _factitive object_, or _second
object_, but it is a true complement.

The fact that this is a complement can be more clearly seen when the
verb is in the passive. See sentence 19, in exercise following Sec.
364.

[Sidenote: _Complement of an intransitive verb_.]

An _intransitive verb_, especially the forms of _be_, _seem_,
_appear_, _taste_, _feel_, _become_, etc., must often have a word to
complete the meaning: as, for instance, "Brow and head were _round,
and of massive weight_;" "The good man, he was now getting _old_,
above sixty;" "Nothing could be _more copious_ than his talk;" "But in
general he seemed _deficient in laughter_."

All these complete intransitive verbs. The following are examples of
complements of transitive verbs: "Hope deferred maketh the heart
_sick_;" "He was termed _Thomas_, or, more familiarly, _Thom of the
Gills_;" "A plentiful fortune is reckoned _necessary_, in the popular
judgment, to the completion of this man of the world."

345. The modifiers and independent elements will be discussed in
detail in Secs. 351, 352, 355.

[Sidenote: _Phrases_.]

346. A phrase is a group of words, not containing a verb, but used
as a single modifier.

As to _form_, phrases are of three kinds:--

[Sidenote: _Three kinds_.]

(1) PREPOSITIONAL, introduced by a preposition: for example, "Such a
convulsion is the struggle _of gradual suffocation_, as _in drowning_;
and, _in the original Opium Confessions_, I mentioned a case _of that
nature_."