Our childhood experiences have made us what we are.
Us is the direct object.
What we are is the object complement. It complements or "completes" the direct object.
Yes, what we are is a noun phrase.
An object complement can be a noun, noun phrase, pronoun, or adjective.
Verbs such as make and create, and those such as name, call, and label often have object complements.
I named my daughter.
I named my daughter Alice.
The other students called April smart.
Josephine painted her elephant pink.
We elected Obama president.
The cats considered the dry food poison.
The witness called everything he saw a complete mess.
What distinguishes the direct object from the object complement?
The direct object takes the action of the verb. It comes before any object complement. To identify the direct object of a sentence, find the verb and ask "verb what?" or "verb who?" See this page.
Everything in bold is a direct object.
The object complement comes after the direct object. The words in italics are object complements.
Note that the order of words can change which noun is the direct object and which is the object complement. D.O. comes first.
I called my daughter Alice.
I called who?
I called my daughter. DO is my daughter.
Alice is OC.
I called Alice my daughter.
I called who?
I called Alice. DO is Alice.
my daughter is OC.
The city planners considered the plan amazing beyond belief.
Josephine found the homework she had done lying in the trash can.
Josephine found what?
the homework she had done is D.O. lying in the trash can is object complement.
Our childhood experiences have made us what we are.
Made who?
Made us (direct object)
what we are is object complement.
This page has more examples.
The initial page actually has anchor links for each word, making it easy to see what the web page is trying to convey.
With an intransitive verb, objects and complements are included in the predicate. (The glacier is melting.)
The objects word links to the Direct and Indirect Objects and thus refers to either or both direct objects and indirect objects. This is further a nod to both intransitive verbs, which don't require either, and ditransitive verbs, which can take both at once.
The complements word links to the Complements section and thus refers to words or phrases that complete the sense of a subject, object, or verb.
So, let's bring that back to the sentence and its accompanying example:
- Not only is the glacier the subject in action (the glacier melts), but also receives said action (the glacier is being melted as a result of its melting).
- The word melting is a complement that completes the sense of the verb is here, and thus is a verb complement.
In your defense, the page isn't terribly well organized and, as Yuri points out in her comment, suffers from inconsistent nomenclature. I'm pretty sure that you're neither the first nor the last person to be confused by that web page (yeah, it was confusing me for a while too).
Best Answer
Look in this sentence is used as a Linking verb. they link the subject of the sentence to a word or phrase in the predicate that renames or describes the subject.
If the verb is a form of be (be, being, been, am, is, are, was, were), you have a linking verb.
For other verbs, if you can replace the verb with a form of "be" and the sentence makes sense, you have a linking verb.
In "You look good", if you replace look with "are" you have "You are good", then look is used as linking verb. It is a synonym of "seem"
Examples with explanation: