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.

1. adjective + wh-clause

   • Always make sure you’re careful adjective when immersing yourself in cold water wh-clause. (Eglin, Massey, and Tipton 2023)
   • And it’s unclear adjective how much the natural world can tolerate such dramatic disturbance wh-clause. (Evans 2020)



2. adjective + to-clause

   • This process can be quite complex and difficult adjective to follow to-clause. (Beach 2023)
   • But collaboration is not easy adjective to achieve or sustain to-clause. (Charles and Keast 2016)



3. adjective + prepositional phrase

   • The darker intervals are composed of a softer type of rock which is more susceptible adjective to erosion prepositional phrase. ((Davies and Lantink 2022)
   • Making recordings of lectures freely available adjective to students prepositional phrase could lead to a fall-off in attendance of the live lectures themselves. (Crook 2015)



4. adjective + that-clause

   • The right partners don’t necessarily have to be like you, but you need to be sure adjective that the other parties respect your way of thinking that-clause. (Charles and Keast 2016)
   • It’s clear adjective that temperatures will increase and precipitation will change that-clause. (Weatherhead 2021)



5. 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 of adjective + preposition making mistakes ing-clause. (Fedrizzi and Malik 2022)
   • One trial showed that honey was more effective at adjective + preposition soothing a cough ing-clause than the placebo over a three-day period. (Enfield 2023)

See more examples of adjective complements See the glossary definition in the glossary. Next ❯ ❮ Previous