Besides the direct address, there are other syntactical elements which are usually said to be outside the sentence. Until recently, they used to be all taken together under the name of parenthesis. This term would then cover a considerable variety of syntactical elements. To illustrate this, we will give two extreme examples from modern texts: (1) Of course Mrs Elsing was simply forced to it... (M. MITCHELL) (2) . . .he told Nelly that an old friend of his had visited him just as he was about to leave, and for politeness' sake — mere politeness, that frailty in human intercourse — he had brought her with him.

There are some elements of the sentence which are neither its main parts, nor any of the usual secondary ones.

It has been often regarded as a special kind of attribute, and sometimes as a secondary part of a sentence distinct from an attribute.

A long discussion has been going on concerning the structure of such sentences as He is here, or They are at home, etc. Two views have been put forward.

We must begin by stating that the term "adverbial modifier" cannot be said to be a very happy one, as it is apt to convey erroneous ideas about the essence of this secondary part. The word "adverbial" may give rise to two notions, both of them wrong. For one thing, we may suppose that an adverbial modifier is always expressed by an adverb, which of course is not true: an adverbial modifier may be expressed by different morphological means. Secondly, the term "adverbial" may give rise to the notion that an adverbial modifier always modifies a verb, which is also wrong! an adverbial modifier may modify a part of the sentence expressed by an adjective or by an adverb, as well as by a verb. As the term "adverbial modifier" is firmly established, it would be futile to try and substitute another term in its place. So we will keep the term, bearing in mind what has been said about its meaning.

As we have already discussed the cases where the distinction between object and attribute is neutralised, so that a secondary part can equally be termed the one or the other (see above, p. 215), we need not dwell on these cases here but we can turn to the attribute as such.

It is well known that there are several types of objects and some kind of classification has to be found for them. Objects differ from one another, on the one hand, by their morphological composition, that is, by the parts of speech or phrases which perform the function of object, and on the other hand, in some cases objects modifying a part of the sentence expressed by a verb form (and that is most usually the predicate) differ by the type of their relation to the action expressed by the verb (it is to this difference that the terms "direct object" and "indirect object" are due).

The theory of the secondary parts is one of the last developed sections of linguistics. The usual classification of these parts into objects, attributes, and adverbial modifiers is familiar to everyone, no matter what his mother tongue may be and what foreign language he may study. Yet it has many weak points. The characteristic features of each of the three types are not clearly defined, and describing a given word or phrase as an object or an attribute in some cases, or again describing it as an object or an adverbial modifier, in others, often proves to be a matter of personal opinion or predilection. Such statements then lack all scientific value. Indeed, with some scholars the theory of secondary parts of the sentence as usually given has been discredited to such an extent that they have attempted to discard it altogether.

The compound nominal predicate always consists of a link verb (also called copula) and a predicative, which may be expressed by various parts of speech, usually a noun, an adjective, also a stative, or an adverb (as in the sentence The lesson is over). Often enough the predicative is represented by a phrase, most usually of the pattern "preposition + noun", which may or may not be a phraseological unit.

Now we come to the second question, about the limits of the compound verbal predicate. It arises from the fact that a rather considerable number of verbs can be followed by an infinitive, some of them with, others without the particle to. Among such verbs are: shall, will, should, would, can, may, must (without to); ought, wish, want, desire, hate, fear, begin, start, continue, omit, forget, remember, etc. (with to).