Optional Adjective complement

I prefer to know what it says, than to presume I am right.
Your humor is not lost on me, merely hitting the floor in a silent irrelevance.

speaking of irrelevance

If those preceding you didn't scare off TheParser with our bleatings, you finished the job.

Freudian slip, Ragman?

Just out of curiosity, do you use a food blender with which you edit and compose your sentences?

I'm not following you. I including my own bleatings in that, as well.

Thank you for being honest, Ragman. I mean that, sincerely.

As a new member, I am very impressed by the willingness of you members to debate a thread starter's question.

I thank all of you very much.

I have been checking my books very carefully, and I have decided to accept the idea of my favorite grammarian, Professor George Oliver Curme.

In his two-volume masterpiece A History of the English Language (1931), he has an explanation for the sentence "He came home tired."

According to the good professor:

1. "Tired" is a so-called predicate appositive.
2. Yes, it does refer to the subject.
3. It also has a relation to the verb.
4. It modifies the verb.
a. Although adjectives usually do not modify verbs, in this kind of sentence, it does.
i. "One predication can modify another."

*****

In another book, I found these two examples:

5. She came home happy.
6, She came home in a happy mood.

The book says that "happy" and "in a happy mood" are complements of the subject.

And I guess that "everyone" would agree that "in a happy mood" is an adverbial element that modifies the verb.

*****

Therefore, thanks to all of you, I now have more confidence in diagramming this:

They = subject.
escaped = verb.
unharmed = adjective that modifies the verb.


James

Happy New Year to all of you. You seem to be a band of most merry fellows.

wait, wait...you said,

Shouldn't it then be an adverb if it modifies the verb?

Professor Curme explains that an "adjective" can modify a verb in such a sentence. Of course, "adjective" is just a word. So maybe it is more accurate to say that "unharmed" is an adjective (which it is) that is being used as an adverbial.

But Pars,as I suggest in #…..539 above coudn't its function depend on an ever-so-slight diff in intended meaning

It was very obvious to all that their escape was a mere jaunt, simple and quick in its execution and raising no question of its difficulty. While they were in captivity, however, they had been at the mercy of very cruel jailers for a very long time and so if we were asking whether they had been mistreated therein, it modifies "They"

Forgive me Pars but I have this noxious habit reminding everyone that nothing is entirely anything while everything is partly something else

Thank you, dalehileman, for your reply.

Yes, as you imply: there are often two or more different ways to interpret the grammar of a sentence.