Objects to adverbs

Objects to statives

Objects to adjectives

The cognate object

§ 80. The verbs that most frequently take a cognate object are:

to live (a life), to smile (a smile), to laugh (a laugh), to die (a death), to sigh (a sigh), to sleep (a sleep), to

dream (a dream), to run (a race), to fight (a, fight,, a battle).

He died the death of a hero.

Here she stopped and sighed a heavy sigh.

One must live one's own life, you know.

The cognate object is always used with words modifying it, never alone:

the death of a hero, a heavy sigh, one’s own life, etc.

to die the death of a hero = to die like a hero;

to sigh a heavy sigh = to sigh heavily, etc.

Semantically cognate objects characterize the action expressed by the predicate-verb. Nevertheless they are considered to be objects, not adverbial modifiers, because:

a) they are expressed by nouns without prepositions, which is not characteristic of adverbials;

b) they may occur in the position of the subject of a passiveconstruction.

He never doubted that life should be lived as he lived.

§ 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.

§ 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.

§ 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.

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