Adjectives: Complements
Types of adjective complements
Types of Adjective Complements
Predicative adjectives may be complemented by a phrase or clause. These may be prepositional phrases, a to-clause, a that-clause, an ing-clause, or a wh-clause.
adjective + wh-clause
- Always make sure you’re careful when immersing yourself in cold water. (Eglin, Massey, and Tipton 2023)
- And it’s unclear how much the natural world can tolerate such dramatic disturbance. (Evans 2020)
adjective + to-clause
- This process can be quite complex and difficult to follow. (Beach 2023)
- But collaboration is not easy to achieve or sustain. (Charles and Keast 2016)
adjective + prepositional phrase
- The darker intervals are composed of a softer type of rock which is more susceptible to erosion. ((Davies and Lantink 2022)
- Making recordings of lectures freely available to students could lead to a fall-off in attendance of the live lectures themselves. (Crook 2015)
adjective + that-clause
- The right partners don’t necessarily have to be like you, but you need to be sure that the other parties respect your way of thinking. (Charles and Keast 2016)
- It’s clear that temperatures will increase and precipitation will change. (Weatherhead 2021)
adjective + ing-clause
In almost all cases the ing-clause is introduced by a preposition.
- That is to say, if we want the machine to be intelligent then it had better be capable of making mistakes. (Fedrizzi and Malik 2022)
- One trial showed that honey was more effective at soothing a cough than the placebo over a three-day period. (Enfield 2023)