My Grammar and I (Or Should That Be 'Me'?): Old-School Ways to Sharpen Your English

The exception: well it would be, wouldn’t it?
The  exception  to  the  subject-verb-object  rule  concerns  –  guess  what  –  the
verb to be . It doesn’t take an object, it takes a complement . To  be  ,  and
verbs used in a similar way, such as to become, to seem, to taste are  called
copulative verbs (honestly, they are – look it up in the dictionary yourself
if  you  don’t  believe  us)  –  they  express  a  state  rather  than  performing  an
action. So in sentences such as:
I am a Londoner
You became an artist
He seems respectable enough
The chocolates tasted of arsenic
the  words  after  the  verb  are  the  complement,  and  they  may  be  nouns,
pronouns, adjectives or adverbs, or phrases serving the same purpose (e.g.
in the above example, of arsenic is an adverbial phrase qualifying the verb
tasted ) .