In the sentence 'John entered the room angry', can 'angry' be considered a resultative predicate? This sentence has the same construction as 'John painted the door green', but while 'green' describes the internal argument 'the door', 'angry' describes the external argument 'John', so I am a bit confused.
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2How could it be a resultative predicate? A resultative predicate describes the result of some sort of action or process in the sentence – what’s the process here? John’s anger is a state, not the result of anything expressed in the sentence, so while it may be predicative, I don’t see how it can be resultative.– Janus Bahs JacquetCommented Feb 1, 2021 at 12:30
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And then there's They shot him dead, They buried him alive, They want her dead, They found him dead, They made him mad, They found the film delightful, etc. Cf The Green Conspiracy– jlawlerCommented Jul 1, 2021 at 17:31
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1 Answer
John entered the room angry.
I'd say that "angry" is an optional depictive functioning as a 'predicative adjunct'.
It's an adjunct because it's an optional item functioning here as a modifier in clause structure, and it's predicative because it's related to a predicand, i.e. "John". (Compare the predicative complement in "John was angry".).
Predicative adjuncts are not restricted to AdjPs; they can also be PPs ("In a bad temper, as usual, John walked on ahead of the main party") or NPs ("A proud teetotaller, John stuck to water while the others drank champagne.").
