One evening she came home irritated

According to their meaning link verbs can be divided into two large groups: link verbs of being and remaining and link verbs of becoming.

1) Link verbs of being and remaining describe some permanent quality of the subject or the state or quality that it has at a certain time. The following link verbs belong to this group: be, remain, keep, continue, look, smell, stand, sit, lie, shine, seem, prove, appear, etc.

2) Link verbs of becoming show the change of quality or state of the subject; they are become, get, grow, come, go, leave, run, turn, make, etc.

THE PREDICATIVE is a significant part of the compound nominal predicate and denotes the state or quality of the person or thing expressed by the subject, or the class of persons or things to which this person or thing belongs It can be expressed by:

1. A noun in the common case, occasionally by the noun in the genitive case:

She is a pretty child. The book is my sister’s.

2. An adjective:

He is awfully dear and unselfish.

Very often the predicative after the verbs be, look, feel, sound, smell, taste expressed by an adjective in English doesn’t correspond to an adjective in Russian. It often corresponds to an adverb, serving as an adverbial modifier.

The dinner smells delicious. – Обед пахнет восхитительно.

Sentences describing weather correspond to Russian one-member sentences.

It’s dark. – Темно. It’s hot. – Жарко.

3. A pronoun – personal, possessive, negative, interrogative, reflexive:

It was he. The privilege was his. Oh, she is just nobody.

What is your idea? She was herself again.

4.A word of the category of state:

But I’m afraid I can’t keep the customer so long.

5. A numeral, cardinal or ordinal:

I’m only 16. Mrs. Snow was the first to break the astonished silence.

6. Aprepositional phrase:

These things were outside her experience.

7. An infinitive, infinitive phrase or infinitive construction:

His only wish was to win.

Jane’s first thought was to leave immediately.

It is for you to decide.

8. A gerund, gerundial phrase or gerundial construction:

My favourite sport is swimming.

Her duty is meeting people at the reception.

The greatest problem was our getting their in time.

9. Participle I or Participle II:

Her behaviour is irritating.

He was surprised at the sound of his own voice.

10. An adverb:

It was enough.

THE OBJECTIVE PREDICATIVE

Besides the predicative referring to the subject, another type of predicative referring to the object can be found in English. It is called the Objective predicative. It expresses the state or quality of the person or thing denoted by the object and is generally expressed by a noun, an adjective, a word denoting state or a prepositional phrase.

They painted the door green.

The Objective Predicative doesn’t form a part of the predicate, and the predicate in this case is simple.

THE COMPOUND VERBAL PREDICATE

The compound verbal predicate can be divided into two types according to the meaning of the finite verb:

1) The compound verbal modal predicate,

2) The compound verbal aspect predicate.