I have observed some sentences where past participle like "to be delivered" or "to be given" was used after the verb "to be", however, today I have observed a sentence given below where sentence maker has not used past participle form of verb but used the normal word like "out" instead.
Rajnath gets stuck in lift, scales wall to be out.
Can anyone clarify, are these all (delivered, given, out) Adjectives? Meaning that it is mandatory to use an Adjective after "to be".
Thanks,
Charmi
Best Answer
be is a copular verb and it's used to connect the subject of the sentence to the complement - a subject complement.
In the above sentences the verb be connects the subject to its complement. A complement need not be an adjective only, but anything that says something about the subject.
In sentence #1 the complement is an adjective. In sentence #2, the complement is past participle of verb (or can be viewed as an adjective), but in sentence #3 the complement is a noun phrase.
All these complements say something about the subjects. And hence they are called subject complement. A copular verb is the one that links the subject with its complement.
In your quoted sentence the complement is - to be out. This is an infinitive clause denoting the purpose of his scaling. out here is an adverbial modifying the verb be and referring to the position of the subject.
Scales the wall so that Rajnath comes out.