Can we use adjectives as adjectivals?
I came across these two sentences:
He stood in there proud to be a kid. “He
is growing up rich. I’m very happy. ” I
think I can understand what each sentence means, but it don’t make sense to me. My understanding about adjectives is that they can only be before the noun or by “be”. I see these kind of sentences on YouTube and have always wondered why. In my first question is that in the first sentence, if I say “He was standing there, being proud?” will the letter still suffice? Is it true? And in the second one, can I say, “He is growing up to be rich.”? My second question is whether these ways of using adjectives, are common or not?
Can someone actually perform this kind of construction as a secondary predicate? I punched him silly! Secondary predications sometimes divided
- into two types..Resultative /Slow and Resultative.. I’m a girl..I am too tired..Failure..I may put his life on hold..?
- I have a beer and I drove home drunk. What are some signs that I’m drinking?
In double examples, the secondary predicate describes the subject. In the former, it describes the result of the primary predicate–in other words, the state the subject is in after the primary predicate is complete. In the latter, it depicts the current state of the subject.
Resultative : state of the
- subject after the primary predication, as a result Depictive : state of the
- subject during the primary predication In both of your examples,
the secondary predication appears to be depictive, meaning it describes the state of the subject: “He was standing there congratulated. ”
” “He was standing there, being proud. He
is extremely rich after college. ” ” He’s a living in a rich family in India. I’m not sure how he would like to live either. What’s up, but I can’t remember his name. ”
Are common? Relatively. Secondary predication of both types is productive in English, which means people use it to create new sentences with some regularity.
From grammar alone you can’t tell which interpretation of a sentence is the original sinister meaning of the sentence. You have to tell from context whether you’re looking at a resultative or depictive construction, and in some sentences both interpretations are possible.
