We passed industrial buildings, their lights muted, faint as stars, as if we were in a time capsule of the war years when blackouts and curfews had been in effect, when there was just warlight and only blind barges were allowed to move along this stretch of river.

In the sentence, ‘This house is big’, ‘big’ is predicative, whereas in ‘This is a big house’, it is attributive.

[Great bards] in sage and solemn tunes have sung.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard has had a 98 percent occupancy rate for leasable space for the last five years and has gone from net cash flow of $700,000 in 2001 to $5.5 million in the fiscal year that ended June 30, because of annual rents that can be more than $20 a square foot.