Is 'to resign' an object or subject complement in 'The teacher wishes to resign'?

Question

The teacher (S) wishes (V) to resign

It is no doubt that 'to resign' is a complement of something, but is it a complement of the noun The teacher or the verb wishes?

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Subject complement [analysis 1]:

In '[The teacher] wishes [to resign]', '[to resign]' can be analysed as the subject complement because it is ascribing a property related to that of the subject noun 'The teacher' and hence, modifying it.

In contrast [This is how, under this analysis, object complement is defined]:

John (S) told (V) Stephanie (D.O) some great advice (Object complement)

In 'John told [Stephanie [some great advice]]', we know 'some great advice' is the object complement because it is describing/ascribing/modifying the direct object 'Stephanie', not 'John' (the subject).

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Object complement [analysis 2]

In '[The teacher] wishes [to resign]', '[to resign]' is an object complement which functions as the direct object of the verb 'wishes'. In terms of clauses, 'to resign' is an infinitive object complement clause functioning as the direct object. This is John Lawler's analysis as described in here.

Furthermore in the paper, he notes:

There are four different types of complement (noun clause, either subject or object – the ones above are all object complements): respectively, they are called infinitive, gerund, that-clause, and embedded question. These types, and their structures and markers (like to and –ing) are often called complementizers. Other names for these types include for-to complementizer (infinitive), POSS-ing (or ACC-ing) complementizer (gerund), inflected (or tensed) clause (that), or WHcomplementizer (embedded question). Which term you use is of no concern; they’re equivalent.

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My questions are in 'The teacher wishes to resign', is:

• 'to resign', a subject or object complement?
• what would you analyse 'to resign' as?
• if either subject or object complement: why and which analysis is more supported?

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I will not accept the reasoning that 'Stephanie' is an indirect object because you can insert a (to) in my sentence as @tchrist states so simplistically:

When you tell someone something, the direct object is the something not the someone. The someone is the indirect object.

No, you have it exactly backwards. Syntax is what drives the syntactic classification, and here the direct object is the thing not the person. When you tell your husband a story, the story is the thing you tell. Your husband is whom you've told that story to. Syntax is why it's an 'indirect object'.

CaGEL provides counterfactual information:

[1c] They gave me the key

Example [1c] has the same propositional meaning as They gave the key to me, but to me is not an indirect object, not an object at all: it is syntactically quite different from me in [1c]. Objects normally have the form of NPs; to me here is a complement with the form of a PP.

p. 53

Furthermore:

"Kim gave the key to Pat"

An NP indirectly related to the verb through the preposition is referred as an oblique. The phrase "to Pat" is a non-core compliment of the verb give, but the NP Pat is an oblique.

p.216

To be precise "They gave the key to me" 'to me' is neither a direct or indirect object but a non-core complement (with a PP) to the verb 'gave'.

Answer 1

In '[The teacher] wishes [to resign]', '[to resign]' can be analysed as the subject complement because it is ascribing a property related to that of the subject noun 'The teacher' and hence, modifying it.

This construction is widely recognized as a "chain of verbs" (catenative, according to the CGEL terminology). This said, "to resign" is a to-infinitival clause, an extremely common form of a verb complement. The head of the clause is the verb "resign". The subject of this clause is the same as that of the matrix clause. (the teacher wishes, the teacher resigns). Were the subjects different, the understood subject of the to-infinitival would be aligned with the object of the main clause: The teacher wishes me to resign. (The teacher wishes, I resign).

Most importantly, clauses do not "ascribe properties" to anything. We think of clauses in different terms. Subject and object can be ascribed properties in the form of an adjective, noun or (less systematically) prepositional phrase.

EDIT: cross-posted with TaliesinMerlin

TaliesinMerlin already provided an accurate (or at least very widely accepted) analysis of this construction, so I could as well delete my post :). However, I could add a couple points to supplement his post.

The examples from Grammaring illustrate the use of to-infinitival clauses as subject complement, but they are possible in this position only as specifiers of the subject. Clauses, as I said, cannot "ascribe properties" to anything. This means that it might be a bit inaccurate to say that "to infinitivals" in these examples "elaborate" on the subject. They can only specify the subject: What is the advice? What is the decision? What is the thing that is essential? (CGEL p270 says that "In the ascriptive construction a subordinate clause can function as S but not in general as PC" In the footnote they note that this may be possible to a limited degree, such as with purpose clauses: This is to clean the lens with etc)

Adjectives and noun phrases could be said to "elaborate on the subject". Adjectives, by definition, ascribe properties, while noun phrases may be used either way.

Answer 2

Are you looking for CGEL terminology? In your sentence—

The teacher wishes to resign.

—to resign is a catenative complement. It complements the catenative verb wishes.

Here is what CGEL has to say in 14 1.2:

[13] vi a. She wants _to leave the country_.
        b. She seems _to like them_.
        c. She hopes _to hear from them soon._

. . . we analyse the underlined clauses in [13vi] as examples of a distinct type of complement realised exclusively by non-finite clauses; we refer to them as catenative complements. . . . The term ‘catenative’ applies to a large class of constructions where a verb has a non-finite internal complement. The name reflects the fact that the construction can be repeated recursively, yielding a concatenation (‘chain’) of verbs . . .

Some traditional grammars consider each non-finite verb in the "chain" after the main verb to be the direct object of the preceding verb, which means it functions as a noun, which means it will be either a gerund or a noun infinitive.

The Guide to Grammar and Writing states:

. . . both gerunds and infinitives can act as a Direct Object . . . Verbs that take other verb forms as objects are called catenatives (from a word that means to link, as in a chain). Catenatives can be found at the head of a series of linked constructions, as in "We agreed _to try to decide to stop eating_ between meals."

(The site goes on to offer a handy list of verbs that accept non-finite verbs as direct objects.)

Consider, for example, this chain:

The teacher wishes to consider planning to resign.

Wishes what? To consider (noun infinitive). Consider what? Planning (gerund). Planning what? To resign (noun infinitive).

Resign is not a catenative verb—it can't be followed by a non-finite verb—thus ends the chain.

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Further reading: Catenative Verbs

Answer 3

The OP has already accepted an answer, but I'll post my own answer anyway because I think that the existing answers (including the accepted one) fail to address the call of the question:

Q1. Is to resign a complement of the noun The teacher or the verb wishes?

But this question is faulty on its face because The teacher is not a noun but a noun phrase (NP). So the question should first be corrected to:

Q2. Is to resign a complement of the noun phrase The teacher or the verb wishes?

But this question is not so correct either because, to be exact, there's no such thing as a complement of an NP. There's only a complement of a noun within an NP.

In the OP's sentence, the NP The teacher only comprises the determiner The and the head noun teacher and nothing else. If the sentence were The teacher of our school wishes to resign, you'd have a prepositional phrase (PP) of our school functioning as complement of the head noun teacher.

But even in this example, the PP is not a complement of the NP The teacher or of the NP The teacher of our school but of the noun teacher because it is the noun teacher itself, not any of the NPs, that licenses the PP.

So the correct question has to be:

Q3. Is to resign a complement of the noun teacher or the verb wishes?

Since to resign is not licensed by the noun teacher but by the verb wishes, the answer is easily:

"a complement of the verb wishes".

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An implied question and answer

Now, you might ask, "What about the question of whether or not to resign is subject complement?"

There seems to be serious confusion about the term subject complement, which is extensively used in traditional grammar. You should not be mistaking subject complement for complement of subject or complement of an NP. Like I said, there's no such thing as a complement of an NP or a complement of subject.

In fact, even in traditional grammar, subject complement is always complement of the verb. And this is the case even in examples like

My advice is to file a complaint at once.

Here, to file a complaint at once is still complement of the verb is, never of the noun advice.

All this confusion I think arises out of the confusing term subject complement adopted in traditional grammar, and you don't even have to resort to CGEL to resolve this confusion.

Answer 4

This is an object complement.

To resign is an infinitive clause that complements the verb wishes. In John Lawler's analysis, he says the complement is determined by its matrix predicate, that is, the part of the predicate that the infinitive is embedded in. If you change the verb in the matrix predicate, then you change what complements can go with it.

• (yes) The teacher wishes to resign

• (no; reported tends to take a that-clause) The teacher reported to resign

• (no; wishes doesn't take a gerund like this) The teacher wishes resigning

The validity of complements like these are dependent on the main verb phrase. To resign complements the predicate, not the subject.

Now, to resign could be a subject complement in another kind of sentence. Imagine a subject that represented the action in the complement as a noun phrase. These examples from Grammaring do just that:

• My advice is to file a complaint at once.
• What is essential is to maintain a healthy diet.
• The decision was to extend the deadline by three months.

Note the copula in all of these examples - is and was. The subject is always something that the subject complement further elaborates: my advice ... to file a complaint at once; what is essential ... to maintain a healthy diet. So to form a subject complement with to resign, you might write:

• The teacher's wish is to resign