Expressing the relationship between an object and its state or quality, especially in grammar; describing verbs that take an object and an object complement together.
From Latin 'factum' (thing made) plus '-ive' (having the quality of). First used in English grammatical analysis in the 1800s to categorize how certain verb constructions work.
In 'We elected her president,' 'president' is called a factive complement—it's like the verb has two jobs: 'elect' AND 'make president.' Languages use this structure to pack more meaning into compact sentences.
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