Teacher Discussion Forums

I'm having a hard time fitting adjective complements into my sentence parsing. Yes, I need to get a life if I parse sentences just to parse them, but I think it's helping me understand English better. And yes, I'm a native speaker that doesn't know her grammar as well as she would like.
Anyway, adjective complements, if they complement adjectives, don't they *have* to be considered adverbial in and of themselves? And if they complement a noun, don't they have to be considered adjectival in and of themselves also?
My simplistic view is that the only thing that can modify an adjective is an adverb; likewise, a noun an adjective. Or, maybe I'm looking at it wrong. Maybe a complement is not doing any modifying at all and so would not be restricted to having to be an infinitive phrase acting as adverb or adjective.
What is complementing then? Do noun and adjective complements have to be respectively adjectival and adverbial?

Example from a grammar website:

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Infinitive phrases often follow certain adjectives. When this happens, the infinitive is said to play the role of Adjective Complement. (This is not a noun function, but we will include it here nonetheless.)

She was hesitant to tell the coach of her plan.
She was reluctant to tell her parents, also.
But she would not have been content to play high school ball forever.

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Thanks,

Donna

Yes, complements of adjectives are adverbs, and complements of nouns can be adjectives. They are complements as opposed to modifiers. Some examples are more obvious than others for explaining the difference.

Consider the infinitive phrase in "She is likely to arrive any minute." Without this adverbial phrase to complement the predicate adjective, this sentence is meaningless, "She is likely." Whereas we can say "She is content ."

Abstract nouns also sometimes need adjective complements to form meaningful noun phrases. Consider how the meaning of these sentences would change without their infinitive phrases "There is nothing to do here" / "We need a place to park the car." / "Tomorrow is the best time to come."

Thank you!