Complementation concerns the forms or constructions required by other forms or constructions. For example, the verb postpone normally requires a noun phrase as its direct object complement (They postponed a decision, *They postponed); the approximately synonymous verb delay does not (They delayed a decision, They delayed). Complementation is thus a particular type of collocation.

Complementation of verbs

Noun phrase complement

As direct object

A verb may have a direct object in British English that would not collocate with it in American. An instance is pull a cracker; crackers containing hats and small gifts are not part of American Christmas celebrations. The American holiday association of crackers is with the Fourth of July, and they are firecrackers, which are not pulled, but set off.

1. pull a cracker <[At Christmas] They sat now, with the food eaten and the crackers pulled, round the table.> 1985 Mortimer 263.

2. shit oneself An example of a verb that is more often reflexive in British than in American is shit. In CIC, the reflexive use – as in <I remember when Rufus bit me I was shitting myself.> 1994 CIC spoken corpus – occurs once in approximately every 3 tokens of the verb in British texts versus once in every 27 tokens of the verb in American texts.

Versus prepositional complement

A number of verbs in contemporary British take a nominal complement, whereas in American (and older British) use, they would normally have a prepositional complement instead. One of the most frequent is agree.