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Re: painting the door green

From:Jeffrey Jones <jsjonesmiami@...>
Date:Sunday, August 24, 2008, 23:23
On Sun, 24 Aug 2008 18:24:54 +0200, René Uittenbogaard
<ruittenb@...> wrote:
> > I'm looking for the English grammatical term for what is known in > Dutch as the "bepaling van gesteldheid" > <http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bepaling_van_gesteldheid> > http://tinyurl.com/6eaf8p > > It is a constituent which is, among others, found in sentences like: > > He is painting the door *green*. > She bought the store *empty*. > They applauded *the skin off their hands*. > > The term is used for somewhat different usages as well, but I'm > looking for the English term for this particular usage. I haven't been > able to find the term on the English wikipedia. Anyone? > > René
It seems different terms are used, but I would call all of these "secondary predicates". A secondary predicate can be either a resultative (the final state of a patient) or a depictive (the current state of either subject or object). Some classic examples are: Mary hammered the metal flat. (resultative) John ate the meat raw. (depictive, object) John ate the meat nude. (depictive, subject) Like Mark, I took your second example for a depictive; the others are clearly resultatives. Jeff