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This article says in part:

Though the White House first announced his nomination in April, lobbyists waited until recently to begin publicly mounting an aggressive opposition effort.

Is 'until recently' here a complement of the verb 'waited' or simply an adjunct? Also, what about "to begin publicly mounting an aggressive opposition effort"?

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  • The infinitival clause complements waited. I would regard until recently as additional info, an adjunct.
    – TimR
    Commented Oct 11, 2017 at 12:24
  • @Tᴚoɯɐuo But in they waited from last December until recently, aren't both from last December and until recently complements of waited?
    – JK2
    Commented Oct 12, 2017 at 3:16
  • "They waited" is a well-formed clause. The prepositional phrases bring extra information to bear, but are not indispensable, and so they are adjuncts. Whereas with "He put a bandage on the wound.", "He put a bandage" is not a well-formed clause, "on the wound" being necessary to complete the idea of "put"; in that case the prepositional phrase is a complement.
    – TimR
    Commented Oct 12, 2017 at 10:21

1 Answer 1

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In your sentence 'until recently" is not a complement of "wait". It is a Temporal Adjunct [FUNCTION in the sentence], realized by a Preposition Phrase (PP).

The structure of this preposition Phrase (PP) is like this -

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CORRECTION: Sorry for the mistake in the tree. There should not be (PP) beside Complement.

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  • The complement of "until" is an Adverb Phrase consisting of (headed by) the adverb "recently". Note that it can be modified, e.g. "until very recently".
    – nschneid
    Commented Dec 10, 2022 at 17:47

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