Grammar structure QA #1

towry
towry
Jul 23, 2017 · 2 min read

2017/07/23

WIP

Q1

It was a body capable of enormous leverage

I will separate this sentence into two part, “It was a body” and “capable of enormous leverage”. I am not sure what it is of the second part in grammar structure.

Q2

The younger of the two was a stranger to me

I am not sure about the part “to me”.

I assume it is either an:

  • adverbial
  • attribute

to modify the stranger or the whole sentence.

From here https://www.englishgrammar.org/subject-attributes/ we can know what is an attribute in Noun Phrase.

The attribute of a noun may be an adjective, an article, a pronoun, a participle, an infinitive or a phrase.

What I am sure about is “me” is an indirect object of the preposition “to”, and “to me” is a prepositional phrase. From here raise a question: what is the difference between ‘infinitive’ and ‘prepositional phrase’.

Update 2017/07/24:

I asked a question on Quora that is not about this question but indirectly answered this question.

Update 2017/07/27:

There are five basic structures of sentence. But adverbial and attribute are optional, and they can be omitted.

So the structure of this sentence is S + V + O + O, “to me” is the indirect object.

Update 2017/07/31:

Answer is here, http://facweb.furman.edu/~moakes/Powerwrite/partspeech.htm. “to me” is an indirect object.

a noun or pronoun that come before or behind a direct object, and tells to whom or for whom or what the action is done. EX: I gave the ball to Jack.

English Grammar nerd

English grammar nerd, learning English grammar by writing about it

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towry

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English Grammar nerd

English grammar nerd, learning English grammar by writing about it

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