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In this sentence:
The dogs who run in the street are especially irritable in the late afternoon.
is the verb are transitive? The dogs is a noun phrase, the subject, argument of are; who run in the street is a relative clause. Can you analyse the function of especially irritable in the late afternoon? Are all these words a predicate? Can you call it a phrase (and what type of phase is it)? Or mostly a predicate that may predicate on are, so all those words may be called an object?
Are is a copular verb, which means that especially irritable is a complement to the subject. The phrase in the late afternoon is an adverbial complement.
Copular verbs don't take objects. They take a complement to the subject that tells us more about the subject, it qualifies the subject. Especially irritable is not a new person or object in the sentence, it elaborates on our existing subject.
Some other examples:
I am a doctor.
The word a doctor here is the same person as the subject I. It is not an object. Notice the difference:
I saw a doctor.
Here a doctor is not the same person as the subject. There is no copular verb here. Saw is a transitive verb and a doctor is a direct object.
