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  #1 (permalink)  
Unread Jun 10th, 2012, 11:47 am
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Default make+pronoun/noun+adjectives

hi everybody.I've got a question about this structure.when we want to make a sentence using make+noun+adjective,i don't know which adjective is appropriate.
1)sport makes me
a)delighted b)delightful
a)joyous b)joyful
is it correct to say:her words make me dignified?
thanks a lot.
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Unread Jun 11th, 2012, 02:36 am
Sue
 
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Default Re: make+pronoun/noun+adjectives

A. The use of "makes + object" is irrelevant here. The answer would be the same for any question involving these adjective pairs. It's a matter of meaning. And in fact, none of the options you give would be a natural use of language.

1. delighted /delightful :

a) "Delighted" comes from the verb, "to delight (someone)" meaning to make (someone) feel very happy. So, the past participle "delighted" means "makes (me) feel very happy. That means that a gloss of your sentence "makes me delighted" would be sport makes me makes me feel very happy. Obviously, not possible because of the repetition. You'd just say "sport makes me feel very happy". Grammatically, you could also
say "sport delights" me. but here there's a problem of style. The verb delight is only used in poetic or formal style. Here are some concordancer examples :
Henrietta, as every artist delight to do, wove strands of her own intuitive insights
Hestercombe House will delight lovers of formal gardens.

in fact, looking at the concordancer, I only found four examples of it being used as a verb (rather than adjectival past participle) at all. It's very rarely used like that.

b. What about "delightful"? This describes the quality of the thing being described, not the feeling of the person experiencing it. Some examples :
...the balmy evenings are delightful
Hungary is such a delightful country
One of the most delightful spots in a southern tour is the city of ...
This delightful tropical fruit has become well-known

Again, it's slightly poetic/formal though is sometimes used ironuically :
There are a number of inconsistencies in that scheme, not least British Gas' delightful decision to interpret the scheme in a way which they hadn't interpreted six months ago.
So here it's not relevant at all. "delightful" is not how sport makes you feel but a quality of sport itself. However because of its poetic style it would be very uunusual to link "delightful" and "sport" - it doesn't occur once in the 3m words of the corpora which I checked, though I did find an example on Google - again though, notice the slightly ironic use : Care to try dancing on ice? Don't laugh. It's a delightful sport for anyone who could use some light, pleasant exercise ...

2. joyous/joyful


The same sort of problems arise here. In particular the fact that both are very poetic in style and therefore just don't collocate with sport. In terms of meaning, this time they're near synonyms, but again, both adjectives generally describe a quality of the thing described and not the feelings of the person experiencing them. Some examples:
Hearst saw his wife and child, sent a joyful message to his mother in California,...
...we would soon be in another city-wide, joyous celebration...


ie it is the message or the celebration which is joyful/joyous, not the person.

I did find just one example of make + object+ joyous but notice that a) only one - it's a rare, unusual use; and b) it's said by a politician speaking formally and trying to emphasise the importance of a world-changing event :
Mr Kinnock said that the opening of the Berlin Wall made him feel joyous about the future.

So, I'd say that none of these are possible :
delighted - because the internal meaning already includes the concept of "makes me"
delightful - because a) it always refers to the thing described, and not the feelings of the person
joyful/joyous - because they're too poetic for the context

If you Google the phrase "sport makes me feel" you'll see that the most usual collocations are good/better or great. Examples :
Sport makes me feel good even if lately I have not been practicing it a lot.
Sport makes me feel good (about myself) and cleans my mind.
sport makes me feel heaps & heaps better, both mentally & physically.
Running,dancing,swimming,playing basketball and every other sport makes me feel great...).


3. dignified

Words can't make you anything, they only make you feel something. When an adjective already describes a feeling, then you can say either :
Her words made me feel happy/sad/angry. etc
or just :
Her words made me happy/sad/angry etc.
But dignified is not a feeling but a quality, like eg important /useless. Notice the difference : if you feel happy, you are happy - but it's possible to feel dignified/important/useless etc without really being like that. So in this case you need to include the verb feel :
Her words made me feel dignified/important/useless
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