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258
I was not aware of your being a scoundrel.
He was fully aware of what he was doing.
Objects to adverbs
§ 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.
The attribute
§ 84. The attribute is a secondary part of the sentence which characterizes person or non-person expressed
by the headword either qualitatively, quantitatively, or from the point of view of situation. Attributes may refer
to nouns and other words of nominal nature, such as pronouns gerunds and substitute words, as in:
It was a letter from his devoted friend.
I mentioned it to him when he was his usual self.
One day I put the picture up again, the lifesize one.
An attribute forms a nominal phrase with its headword.
Ways of expressing attributes
§ 85. An attribute may be expressed by different parts of speech:
1. By (a) adjectives or (b) adjectival phrases, which characterize the person or non-
person qualitatively or express the speaker’s attitude.
a) The sand glittered like fine white sugar in the sun.
I’ve never seen a better place.
There is nothing unusual about the letter.
Some composite adjectives may be derived from
other parts of speech by means of the participle-forming
suffix -ed, as in:
It was a low-ceilinged L-shaped room.
They sat on the pine-needled sand.
Some adjectives have developed from former participles II, as in;
Martin lived with his widowed mother.
He looked for his long-lost friend everywhere.
b) In any case it gave no clue to the thought then uppermost in Hercule Poirot’s mind.
He stood and raged within himself with sour despair, unable to move or say a word.
2. By pronouns or pronominal phrases, which help to identify or define persons or non-
persons.
The woman by no change of face showed that his words meant anything to her.
Here’s some money for you.
Can you see those children of mine anywhere?