i need help with subject complements?

Question

in the sentence: "Some games that are popular with students are tag, hopscotch and basketball." would "tag, hopscotch, basketball" be direct object, indirect object, predicate nominative or predicate adjective?

Answer 1

Okay, a few working definitions.

A direct object recieves the action from the verb.
I threw the ball. Ball is the direct object, it gets thrown.

An indirect object recieves the direct object.
I threw Bob the ball. The ball is still being thrown, but Bob is the one who catches it. (hopefully)

A predicate nominative is a noun or pronoun that follows a linking verb (usually a form of to be) and renames the subject.

C.S. Lewis is an author. Author renames the subject, so it's a nominative, and it follows the linking verb is, so it's part of the predicate.


A predicate adjective is an adjective that follows a linking verb, and describes the subject.

The furnace was hot. Hot is an adjective which describes the furnace, but if follows the linking verb was, so it's part of the predicate.

Predicate adjectives and nominatives are both types of subject complements, because they complete the meaning of the linking verb, and further identify and describe the subject.

Now,in your example-to identify the parts of speech, you need to start by breaking it into the subject and predicate. Your subject is fairly obvious, "games". Some is an adjective modifying games.
Next we look for the verb, which is a little trickier here because the next word is "that". This phrase, "that are popular with students" is actually an adjectival clause, which modifies the subject. The verb of the sentence is the "are" which procedes "tag, hopscotch, and basketball", and not the "are" which preceeds the adverb popular
In your sentence, the words "tag, hopscotch, and basketball" are in the predicate, since they come after the linking verb "are" They are nouns, so they are nominatives. They rename "games", which is the subject of your sentence. So they are a kind of subject complement known as predicate nominatives.

Subject compliments are different from appositives because they always follow a linking verb, so are part of the predicate. An appositive is noun which can rename the subject, but it always follows directly after the noun or pronoun it is renaming. An appositive can be eliminated from the sentence without changing anything. A subject compliment can't be eliminated.

I hope this makes things a little clearer and doesn't just muddy them up for you.

Answer 2

It's definately NOT the first two because "are" is a linking verb (not an action verb) and therefore the words after it cannot receive the action. I think it's the predicate adjective since a subject complement renames the subject (or adds more information in this case). Since you can put those sports in front of the subject (games) they appear to be adjectives (e.g. basketball games).

"With students" is a prepositional phrase and can be dropped from the sentence completely to help avoid confusion.

Here's a quick lesson on the first two choices:

I gave flowers. (I = subject; gave = verb; flowers = direct object, or what was given)

I gave Mom flowers. (I = subject; gave = verb; Mom = indirect object, or the recipient of the direct object; flowers = direct object)

Answer 3

I think they would be predicate nominative. I think students are the direct object.


I could very possibly be wrong. I was never good with that kind of stuff. I never did see why it mattered.

Answer 4

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Answer 5

direct object