Is it possible for a sentence to have a direct object and predicate adjective?

In school, I was taught that action verbs have direct objects and linking verbs have predicate adjectives or nominatives; however, some verbs seem to use both simultaneously.

For example, in "I made it blue," made seems to have both a direct object it and a predicate adjective blue.

In the early stages of my adverb obsession, I suspected that "All men are created equal" should be "All men are created equally"¹ mostly because it was not clear to me how equal as an adjective could be validly placed in that position. Thinking of it as "[unspecified subject] created all men equal", men seems to be the direct object. But then what to do with equal?

Is it possible for a sentence to have a direct object and predicate adjective, or is something else going on here that I'm not seeing?

¹I have since realized that they express distinct ideas, the equality of the process of creation and the equality of the created men respectively.

Solution 1:

Your example I made it blue does not have a [subject]* predicate adjective. The word blue is an object complement [a predicate adjective of the object]. The sentence follows this pattern

Subject + verb + object + complement

Here are more examples of this pattern.

• I painted the house brown.
• I found the child silly.
• He considers the idea ridiculous.

http://www.englishgrammar.org/verb-patterns-subject-verb-object-object-complement/ has more information about this pattern.

Similar to your comment All men are created equal should be All men are created equally, I used to think that Apple's slogan Think Different was ungrammatical. Then I heard an interview with Steve Jobs where he explained that he wanted different to be what we think, not how we think, such as think victory or think beauty.

*Update: I updated this answer based on BillJ's helpful comment. The updated parts are in brackets.