Researchers of the language as a functional system have long been seeking to find the rules that govern sentence generation by allowing and prohibiting the succession of certain words within the sentence. In the meantime, the predicate- and verb-centered approach to the sentence has been gaining ground, as it seems practical from various perspectives. If we consider sentence as a structure with the predicate (usually verbum finitum) at the top, the relations between subject-, object- and adverbial governments will become more visible, which helps to alleviate or even resolve several analytical difficulties. The relations between the verb and its complements might also vary in terms of closeness. In the case of certain verbs with a ”blank” meaning, the relation with the complement is extremely strong: under no circumstance can these verbs stand alone (e. g. készít ’prepare’, gondol ’think’, lakik ’live’). In other cases the opposite holds true: e. g. the verb alkonyodik ’night is falling’ does not require any of the possible complements. Between the two extremes there is an extremely broad spectrum. The author in her article outlines the history of research into verbal government structures. Then she introduces the relevant chapters of ”Vengerskij jazyk” by Klara Majtinskaja (1960), a descriptive grammar of outstanding importance in the area of verbal government structures. The author compares the fundamental systematizing principles followed by Klara Majtinskaja with the classification applied in the most recent, revised traditional grammar of Hungarian (Keszler 2000).