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First, note that "x is y" is not always logically equivalent to "y is x". For example, "Fools are my friends" is different from "My friends are fools" (because the first allows wise men to be my friends too, whereas the second does not); "All men are mortals" is very different from "Mortals are all men" :-) That said, sometimes there is an equivalence, and ...

EDIT: Added modals including quasi-modals; added examples and exceptions; note that these lists are only “complete” for the modals and quasi-modals. That’s because make does not take a to-infinitive. It takes a bare infinitive, without the to particle. Not all infinitives have a to attached to them. You really have to learn the sort of complement each ...

None of them are incorrect. English sense verbs, unlike most complement-taking verbs, can take either gerund or infinitive complements. I saw/heard him leave/leaving. This is most common with long-distance senses, of course; She smelled him leaving is a fairly unlikely (though not ungrammatical) thing to say. It may be (and undoubtedly some people ...

You seem to have confused the to particle used in certain infinitive constructs with to used as a preposition. In English, the phrasal verb confess to takes the -ing form of the verb as its complement, not a bare infinitive as you have used here. He confessed to forging the signature. He confessed to having forged the signature. This acts as the head ...

The verb allow can be used in three different syntactic constructions indicating what is allowed. Here are the three constructions with examples from the Corpus of Contemporary American English: (a) with a gerund complement indicating what is allowed: allow [gerund phrase] the president last month unveiled plans to allow [drilling in Atlantic waters ...

In this sentence, to cross the road is an objective predicative complement within the sentence. Such phrases take the general form: SUBJECT + VERB + OBJECT + COMPLEMENT The object here is clearly him. Side note As far as I'm aware, the "objective complement" is a rather peculiar construct to the English language. Other European languages (I can vouch ...

I must say I always find such terms vague: is it an adjective that functions as a complement, i.e. a complement of an adjectival nature (I am large)? Or a complement to an adjective (I am large of mind)? Some interpret it as the latter; however, most linguistic Google results seem to interpret it as an adjective that is used as a complement, usually a ...

It is tempting to see off guard as an adverbial. As such, it would mean ‘My Great Uncle Algie kept trying to catch me in an off guard manner’, but that clearly cannot be. It was neither the aunt nor the manner of catching that was off guard, but the nephew. It follows that off guard is an adjective which postmodifies me.

Collins Cobuild term verbs such as be, remain, look, and turn link verbs, some of which take an 'adjective complement'. Certainly, Her teeth were etc need some form of completer. A snag is that one can't really sensibly separate syntax and semantics here. Be in this usage is certainly just a placeholder, whilst turn has added semantic content (as well as ...

The opposite/complement of digressing is sticking to the intended subject matter. As for the action of getting back to that position after a digression, OP's "To get back on topic,...", or "To return to the subject,..." are perfectly normal. A possible one-word alternative might be... "Refocussing,..."

Some adjectives allow, or even require, a further phrase as part of their meaning. So for example "ready" can be used absolutely, as in "I am ready", but can also take a PP (prepositional phrase), as in "I am ready to go" or "I am ready for anything". Note that "for anything" is not at the sentential level as would be for example the "with" phrase in ...

Resume (“To start (something) again that has been stopped or paused from the point at which it was stopped or paused; continue, carry on”) and return occasionally are so used in phrases in fiction, like “After that digression he resumed...”, or a narrator might say, “To resume our story” or “To return to my point”. Recollect, in sense “To collect (things) ...

I would call white in that case a modicative adjunct, for it describes the state brought about by the verb. That also answers your second question. There are many examples of this pattern, creeping even into formulaic phrases. He stood dumb at the bar. Usually they are employed in descriptions of a literary nature, as in your example. The bones ...

I believe the term "subject complement" has gone out of favor. These days, ill would be referred to as a predicate adjective, for more about which see Predicate Adjective explanation in layman's terms. Regardless of whether "subject complement" or "predicate adjective" is the term you use, however, neither ever modifies the verb. The predicate is the ...

One way of dealing with this structure is to propose something called a small clause, which is effectively a structure encapsulating arguments (e.g. subject, complement) as though there was a verb, but without an actual verb present inside the "clause". The structure crops up 'on the surface' in various cases such as: English: They considered [[him] ...

The noun threat may take either a prepositional phrase (PP) headed by to or a verb phrase (VP) headed by a marked infinitive as a complement—or both: ... the global threat [PP to our security] ... Britain's threat [PP to France] [VP to stifle its trade] The PP names the recipient of the threat: the person or entity against whom Britain directs the ...

An interesting bunch of examples, and correctly grouped. However, the three groups are not monophyletic. Briefly, Group A is an example of what linguists call a "rule conspiracy", where a number of independently motivated processes "conspire" to produce a similar surface structure. Georgia Green discussed them in her paper [Green, Georgia M. (1970) 'How ...

Your (1) is, formally, a simple passive construction Meg was left out of things, with best as an adverb modifying the clause. It has, however, idiomatic force: the construction X is best VERBed means The best thing to do is to VERB X. In this case, “It was decided that the best thing to do was to leave Meg out of things.” Your (2) is a participial phrase, ...

I can see why you would be confused. The Oxford definition is, no doubt, correct; but it is pretty complicated for everyday purposes. Let me explain it the way I do when speaking to American school children. Whenever you are trying to decide what part of speech a word (or phrase) is, look at what job the word/phrase is doing. Adjectives and adverbs both ...

At http://media.leidenuniv.nl/legacy/console17-asada.pdf is an in-depth discussion of structures involving object complements (which structures are also said by some to involve secondary predication) . I'll just quote the introduction, which I believe gives a clear and valid classification (though the rest of the article goes on to recommend alternative ...

An adjective phrase and an object complement are two different levels of description, so it is possible (indeed common) for an object complement also to be an adjective phrase. Here's a simpler example to explain what I mean: The big man read a long book. The big man is a noun phrase (one level of description, explaining the grammatical category of ...

Both usages are valid in this instance, although there might be some out there who would find the usage of "so" at the end of this sentence to be awkward, expecting the sentence to continue. For a more pronounced difference between "it" and "so" and how they are not always interchangeable, compare "I think so," and "I think it."

A verb (cross) cannot be the object. Break the statement into smaller pieces and the true object becomes more obvious: I saw him 'I' subject, 'saw' verb, 'him' accusative object he crossed the road crossing is a separate activity to the seeing