When the completing word expressing the idea to be attributed does not unite with the asserting word to make a single verb, we distinguish it as the +Attribute Complement.+ [Footnote: Subjective Complement may, if preferred, be used instead of Attribute Complement.] Connected attribute complements of the same verb form a +Compound Attribute Complement+.
Most grammarians call the adjective and the noun, when so used, the
+Predicate Adjective+ and the +Predicate Noun+.
+DEFINITION.—The Attribute Complement of a Sentence completes the predicate and belongs to the subject.+
Analysis.
1. Slang is vulgar.
Slang | is \ vulgar
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+Explanation+.—The line standing for the attribute complement is, like the object line, a continuation of the predicate line; but notice that the line which separates the incomplete predicate from the complement slants toward the subject to show that the complement is an attribute of it.
+Oral Analysis+.—Vulgar is the attribute complement, completing the predicate and expressing a quality of slang; is vulgar is the entire predicate.
2. The sea is fascinating and treacherous. 3. The mountains are grand, tranquil, and lovable. 4. The Saxon words in English are simple, homely, and substantial. 5. The French and the Latin words in English are elegant, dignified, and artificial. [Footnote: The assertion in this sentence is true only in the main.] 6. The ear is the ever-open gateway of the soul. 7. The verb is the life of the sentence. 8. Good-breeding is surface-Christianity. 9. A dainty plant is the ivy green.
+Explanation+.—The subject names that of which the speaker says something. The terms in which he says it,—the predicate,—he, of course, assumes that the hearer already understands. Settle, then, which—plant or ivy—Dickens supposed the reader to know least about, and which, therefore, Dickens was telling him about; and you settle which word—plant or ivy—is the subject. (Is it not the writer's poetical conception of "the green ivy" that the reader is supposed not to possess?)