Adjectives: 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 carefuladjective when immersing yourself in cold waterwh-clause. (Eglin, Massey, and Tipton 2023)
• And it’s unclearadjective how much the natural world can tolerate such dramatic disturbancewh-clause. (Evans 2020)

adjective + to-clause

• This process can be quite complex and difficultadjective to followto-clause. (Beach 2023)
• But collaboration is not easyadjective to achieve or sustainto-clause. (Charles and Keast 2016)

adjective + prepositional phrase

• The darker intervals are composed of a softer type of rock which is more susceptibleadjective to erosionprepositional phrase. ((Davies and Lantink 2022)
• Making recordings of lectures freely availableadjective to studentsprepositional phrase 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 sureadjective that the other parties respect your way of thinkingthat-clause. (Charles and Keast 2016)
• It’s clearadjective that temperatures will increase and precipitation will changethat-clause. (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 ofadjective + preposition making mistakesing-clause. (Fedrizzi and Malik 2022)
• One trial showed that honey was more effective atadjective + preposition soothing a coughing-clause than the placebo over a three-day period. (Enfield 2023)