An 'adjective' in a sentence. 'He shouted himself hoarse.' 'Hoarse' is an adjective, meaning 'sounding rough and unpleasant, especially because of a sore throad'. Then in some sentences like 'He screa

Hanyu

An 'adjective' in a sentence. 'He shouted himself hoarse.' 'Hoarse' is an adjective, meaning 'sounding rough and unpleasant, especially because of a sore throad'. Then in some sentences like 'He screamed/shouted himeself hoarse'. It's not understandable to me. If it says 'He made himeself hoarse', then I know, as we can put an adjective in 'make sb/sth adj'. Here I can't make it. Can you help explain the use of 'hoarse'? Thanks in advance.Can it be seen as a set phrase? Or Because 'to become hoarse' is a following state of 'to shout', then 'hoarse' rather than 'hoarsely' is understandable.

Sep 5, 2015 3:38 PM

Answers · 6

Hunter, This is a classic English sentence structure. The components are: Subject + verb + object + object complement Examples: Her husband drove her mad. I painted the town red. The movie made her famous. His behaviour made me sick.

September 5, 2015

Here's an academic paper on something called cross-componential causativity :http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~ctjhuang/PKU_lectures/Lecture_2/Li.Yafei.1999.pdf, It compares Chinese and English syntax and may ( or may not) answer your question. Failing that, you could just accept the phrase as it is. Think of it as a shorthand version of saying 'He shouted (until he was) hoarse'.

September 5, 2015

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