Objects to adjectives

§ 81. There are quite a number of adjectives that can take an object, although not quite in the same way as verbs do. In the sentence these adjectives are mainly used as predicatives. The objects they take are of two kinds:

1. Direct objects expressed only by infinitives or infinitive phrases. No noun or pronoun is ever possible in this position.

Mack was very glad to get home.

Mary was happy to have met us.

II. Indirect non-recipient objects governed by various prepositions. These objects are usually expressed by a noun or pronoun, sometimes by a gerund, a gerundial phrase or complex, or by a clause, depending on the combinability of the adjective.

Now she was ready for anything.

I was surprised at her being so shy.

She was only half conscious of what was going on.

As can be seen from the above examples, structurally objects to adjectives may be of the same types as objects to verbs, that is, simple, phrasal, complex, or clausal.

Objects to statives

§ 82. The statives that can take objects are few in number. The most frequent of them are: afraid, aware, alive, ashamed, ahead, akin. Their objects may be direct infinitive or clausal objects, or an indirect non-recipient object. The latter may be expressed by a noun (pronoun), a gerund, a gerundial phrase or predicative complex,or a clause.

She had never been afraid to experiment.

I think he was afraid I shouldn’t rememberhim.

I was afraid of you, my pretty.

I was not aware of your being a scoundrel.

He was fully aware of what he was doing.

Objects to adverbs

§ 83. There are some adverbs which can take objects, but these can only be indirect non-recipient objects.

Fortunately for himself, he could not be present.

The attribute

§ 84. The attribute is a secondary part of the sentence which characterizes person or non-person expressed by the headword either qualitatively, quantitatively, or from the point of view of situation. Attributes may refer to nouns and other words of nominal nature, such as pronouns gerunds and substitute words, as in:

It was a letter from his devoted friend.

I mentioned it to him when he was his usual self.

One day I put the picture up again, the lifesize one.

An attribute forms a nominal phrase with its headword.