[Grammar] The owners wait to get into the place, with the growing conviction that the madhouse

[Lohengrin1983]

I don't know if I understand the object complement well. Could the word "first" be characterized as an object complement in the following sentence?: "The owners wait to get into the place, with the growing conviction that the madhouse will claim them first."

 

[jutfrank]

No. What object are you talking about?

first means 'before they get into the place'.

Please tell us exactly where you found this sentence.

 

[Lohengrin1983]

I found the sentence in this text (it was sent to me via e-mail by a colleague): "Work began at the cottage towards the end of September and the Hales grew quite excited when they saw how much had been accomplished after ten days. What they failed to realize, in their innocence, was the fact that the first stages of any building work are rapid and quickly apparent. It is the last stages which are so maddeningly prolonged, when plasterers wait for plumbers and plumbers wait for electricians, and decorators wait for the right paint and wall paper, and the owners wait to get into the place, with the growing conviction that the madhouse will claim them first."

 

[Lohengrin1983]

I meant the object "them".

 

[TheParser]

NOT A TEACHER

Lohengrin, my teachers told me to simplify a sentence in order to parse (analyze) it. So let's look at "They had the conviction that the madhouse would claim them first."

1. If you deleted "first," the sentence would still make sense.
2. "First" in that sentence is what people traditionally call an adverb. It would be parsed as an adverb that modifies the verb "would claim," I believe.

Now look at this sentence that I have made up: "I painted the house red." As you can see, the adjective "red" tells us more about the object "house." So "red" would be called an object complement (the word "complement" comes from the word "complete," for it completes the meaning of the object). It would be too long to say something like "I painted the house so that it was red."