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Electrum Posted 15 years ago
Grammar

Adjective or participle transivitized by omitting preposition

I've been thinking about a very common construction, of which these are examples:

Curious what they were doing, I asked Nunu...

Surprised that they were home, I knocked politely...

Glad she was feeling better, I kissed her affectionately...

Thankful the conflict was ending, I began to trudge...

What is the consensus of grammarians' opinions on such phrases.

"Curious what they were doing" sounds better to me than "curious about what they were doing."
  

Top answer

Use of a conjunction always render both clauses clearer. For style, you can often remove them but, honestly, isn't the second phrase more clear than the others?

— JohnParis

  • Use of a conjunction always render both clauses clearer.
  • For style, you can often remove them but, honestly, isn't the second phrase more clear than the others?
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2 Answers
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Use of a conjunction always render both clauses clearer.

For style, you can often remove them but, honestly, isn't the second phrase more clear than the others?
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JohnParisUse of a conjunction always render both clauses clearer.
For style, you can often remove them but, honestly, isn't the second phrase more clear than the others?[/quote

I'm not talking about the conjunction. I'm talking about a preposition that has been omitted.

In 'Surpised that they were home', 'surprised' is treated as transitive in that i
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