collinsdictionary.com:
(1) Scarlet with rage, she swept past her employer and stormed up the stairs.
I thought adjectives can modify personal pronouns only in short phrases like "poor me" or "lucky you". But in this example "scarlet with rage" seems to modify "she". In this regard, I have some questions:
Is "scarlet with rage" an adjective phrase?
Does "scarlet with rage" function as the modifier of "she"?
If not, could you help me please to parse this phrase?
Scarlet with rage, she swept past her employer and stormed up the stairs.
"Scarlet with rage" is an adjective phrase, but it's a supplement (or appendage), not a modifier.
Its function is that of predicative adjunct: predicative because it relates to a predicand, i.e. "she" (she is the one who was scarlet with rage) and adjunct because it's an optional item in clause structure.
But predicative adjuncts aren't restricted to AdjPs: you can also have PPs or NPs:
In a bad temper, as usual, John walked on ahead of the main party.
A proud teetotaller, John stuck to water while the others drank champagne.
It's not unheard of for an adjective to modify a pronoun:
Loving in truth and fain in verse my love to show,
That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,—Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella 1
There's also the movie title Despicable Me.
Then there are phrases like "royal we" and "generic you," but those are special cases, in that the sense would be clearer with quotation marks around the pronoun: "royal 'we.'"
So: yes, it's definitely possible, though very far from common in everyday discourse, to use an adjective to modify a pronoun. That said, I agree with the general tenor of the answers and comments here: scarlet with rage is an adjunct, and scarlet is not functioning as a stand-alone adjective.
Scarlet with rage is a shortened gerund-participial (where being was omitted):
[Being] scarlet with rage
This gerund-participial is functioning as an adjunct and it modifies the rest of your sentence. I would classify it as an adjunct of reason or accompaniment.
A Student's Introduction to English Grammar (Rodney Huddleston & Geoffrey K. Pullum) analyses the sentence:
Following the manual, we tried to figure out how to assemble the unit.
saying that
Following is predicator in a gerund-participial clause functioning as adjunct; this clause itself has no overt subject, but an understood subject is retrievable from the subject of the main clause: the sentence implies that WE were following the manual. (see pp. 135-136)
In the same way, your sentence implies that SHE is scarlet with rage, but the gerund-participial clause does not modify the pronoun she.
COMPARE THESE THREE before reading this answer. If you think they are the same, don't bother with the answer:
Scarlet with rage, she swept past her employer and stormed up the stairs.
Scarlet with rage, she was completely alienated at that moment.
In a huff, she swept past her employer and stormed up the stairs.
The answers assume that "scarlet with rage" means: Very angrily in the first, and very angry in the second.
"scarlet with rage" can be an answer to that old adverbial idea:
How did she sweep past her employer? Hmm?
Like Fumble Fingers said: she swept past angrily. angrily=scarlet with rage. No "being" at all.
Why? Because colors are not in adverbial form, so you need that old friend "with" to make them function adverbially:
green with envy
blue with cold
black with ill humour
white with fear [and so on for other colors]
If you say "The children were blue with cold" and that therefore, it is adjectival, yes, it would be. But if you say: They stumbled in in freezing condition. the phrase in freezing condition describes how they stumbled. So, in the presence of dynamic verbs, I'd favor calling these adverbials.
To answer the question, this:
WHEREAS:
She was scarlet with rage when she swept past her employer and stormed up the stairs. is adjectival and describes "she" (the pronoun that is the subject of the sentence) after a linking verb "was".
And just to really nail home the point:
She turned scarlet with rage when he gave her the news. is adverbial based on what I explained above.
These are also called adverbial adjuncts (the ones above with strong verbs), specifically here of manner (how). adverbial adjuncts _ of manner
Merriam Webster: turn. Definition 6.
c
to cause to become of a specified nature or appearance turned him into a frog embarrassment turned her face red
REFERENCE FOR A FRONTED ADVERBIAL:
Fronted Adverbials A fronted adverbial is a word, phrase or clause that is used as an adverb, modifying a verb or a clause that comes after it. The "fronted" part of the name means that it comes in front of everything else. Adverbs themselves can be used as adverbials, but many other types of words, phrases and clauses can be used in this way, including prepositional phrases and subordinate clauses. What do fronted adverbials do? These phrases are useful in descriptive writing, as they can easily describe where, when and how an action occurred. Basically, fronted adverbials are phrases or words at the start of a sentence which are used to describe the action that follows. They can be used as sentence starters. Normally, a comma is used after an adverbial, although there are still plenty of exceptions to this rule.
Scarlet with rage, she swept past her employer and stormed up the stairs.
She swept past her employer and stormed up the stairs while/and she was scarlet with rage.
Scarlet with rage is adjectival but, with the omitted conjunction, it has the effect of a sentence adverb modifying She swept past her employer and stormed up the stairs
