Figuring the SVO of the sentence “I'm Tom.”

Question

I was under the impression that every sentence has a subject–verb–object (SVO) where S and V are compulsory and O is optional.

So basically I was wondering in the sentence "I'm Tom." is the subject "I" and the verb "am" ? But what about the "Tom" ? It simply can't be an object right?

Answer 1

Not every sentence is SVO. SVO refers to the general pattern of those primary constituents for English and a variety of other languages when discussing language typology. It's not a language requirement.

Intransitive verbs in English, for example, don't need an object. In fact, they can't take an object:

• He died, for example, doesn't have an object.
• *He died poison, is not grammatical.

be (the copula) is a strange verb in most languages. Some would analyse simple sentences such as I am Tom as stative passive, with Tom being the complement of I.

Answer 2

Like Myqlarson said, SVO merely indicates a language typology, which basic elements order in a sentence is Subject-Verb-Object. This means that these elements are typically in this position, but in the middle you might put other elements (adjectives, adverbs); there might also exist exceptions in the same language to this rule.

In your case "I'm Tom", we need to treat it a little differently. That is because the verb "To be" is not a "predicative verb" or action verb (I'm not sure if the first is the right term), but a copular verb, also called linking verb.

The difference is that when you have a copular verb, the verb plays the role of defining the subject together with the element coming after it, such as in this case "I am Tom"; when you have an action verb, you're not defining the subject, but rather you're defining the action done by the subject (that "falls" on the object, in case there is one).

This last sentence is important because it touches your other question: not all verbs need an object, and not all verbs can stay there with only one object. This is called verb valency (I'll paste the scheme, the numbers indicate the objects taken):

1. an avalent verb takes no arguments, e.g. It rains. (Though it is technically the subject of the verb in English, it is only a dummy subject, that is a syntactic placeholder - it has no concrete referent. No other subject can replace it.);
2. a monovalent verb takes one argument, e.g. He¹ sleeps;
3. a divalent verb takes two, e.g. He¹ kicks the ball²;
4. a trivalent verb takes three, e.g. He¹ gives her² a flower³;
5. a tetravalent verb takes four. Sometimes bet is considered to be a tetravalent verb in English like in the example: The fool¹ bet him² five quid³ on "The Daily Arabian"⁴ to win.

Answer 3

That kind of sentence is the main exception the SVO rule. Specifically, one where the verb is a form of "to be." Such a verb is called a "copula."

The verb "to be" connects two EQUALS. "I" is equal to "Tom" in this sentence. Therefore, "Tom" would not be an object. Instead, it would be a "subject complement."

Answer 4

There are all sorts of arguments about complements, which arise from Latin - lacking strict word order, Latin used the same case (nominative) for the subject and complement when the verb was the copula.

This meant that "I am Tom" ego Thomas sum and "Tom is I" Thomas ego est would not be distinguishable (well, actually, they would be because the verb-subject agreement as to person, but "Tom is a man" Thomas vir est and "A man is Tom" vir Thomas est would be).

Lots of traditional English prescriptive grammar is copied from Latin, and the rigid rule that rejects the idea of the verb "to be" taking an object and requires a complement in the nominative case (ie, "Tom is I" rather than "Tom is me") is one of those rules that makes a lot more sense in the original Latin than it does in an uninflected strict-word-order language like English.

In the example, actually, I would accept that Tom is a complement - but you should be careful; to most native speakers, subject and complement are not interchangeable; ie there is a correct word order and a wrong one.

The accusative (or objective) case for pronouns is at least as common in English as the nominative (or subjective) case when they are the complement. I would probably answer "Richard is me" to the question "Which one of you is Richard?" rather than "Richard is I". I think most native speakers would do the same, in spite of prescriptivist grammarians trying to argue for a complement in the nominative.