[Grammar] He pleaded guilty to three counts of murder

[Phil_1990]

Hi everyone,

I've been trying to analyse this sentence for a while now, and it's been quite tricky! I want to classify every word in the sentence.


"He pleaded guilty to three counts of murder."


Specifically, I'm having problems classifying 'guilty' and 'to three counts of murder'.

1 - Is 'guilty' the object of 'plead', even though it's and adjective?
2 - I've decided that 'to three counts of murder' is a prepositional phrase, though I may be wrong! Is it possible to be more specific here?

There is obviously a pattern 'plead + adjective + to + noun phrase'.

Any help would be greatly appreciated Thanks!

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

I don't know much about parts of speech, so I Googled it. It looks like what you have there is a predicate adjective.

More Googling found this, which I read to mean that "to three counts of murder" is, indeed, a prepositional phrase:

 

[TheParser]

NOT A TEACHER


Phil, I also love to parse (analyze) sentences, so I learned something new today because of your question. Thanks!

According to my Web source, a sentence such as "He pleaded not guilty" is just a shorter way to say "He pleaded that he was not guilty." (The noun clause "that he was not guilty" is the object of the verb.)


Source: Learn English Grammar: Transformations "He pleaded that he was not guilty."

 

[PaulMatthews]

I've been trying to analyse this sentence for a while now, and it's been quite tricky! I want to classify every word in the sentence.

"He pleaded guilty to three counts of murder."

Specifically, I'm having problems classifying 'guilty' and 'to three counts of murder'.

1 - Is 'guilty' the object of 'plead', even though it's and adjective?
2 - I've decided that 'to three counts of murder' is a prepositional phrase, though I may be wrong! Is it possible to be more specific here?

There is obviously a pattern 'plead + adjective + to + noun phrase'.

He pleaded guilty to three counts of murder.

"Plead guilty" is more or less a fixed phrase. "Guilty to three counts of murder" is an adjective phrase with "guilty" as head and the preposition phrase "to three counts of murder" as complement of the head.

The whole adjective phrase then functions as a subject-oriented predicative complement of "pleaded".

Note that an alternative construction is He pleaded that he was guilty of three counts of murder, where the underlined element is a declarative content clause functioning as complement of "pleaded", and where the meaning is essentially the same. In this construction, the predicative complement is "guilty of three counts of murder".