verbs - Figuring the SVO of the sentence "I'm Tom."

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

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.