This is an old topic going back several years but I wanted to bring it up again not because I am trying to beat a dead horse but other forum members had offered solutions but the topic just drifted off without any further responses.
The old topic is this: how to tell the difference between " I see a man painting a red house" versus " I see a man painting a house red" . The problem occurred if meaning the latter and I am including responses from other members because my study of Latin is very limited and I seek the opinion of others.
Here are three possible answers:
Video hominem domum pingentem rubram.
Video hominem domum pingentem ut rubra sit.
Video hominem pingentem rubro colore.
Given the free word order of Latin I suppose no. 1 leaves some ambiguity. The origin of this old topic in the first place was to point out the short coming of Latin not having the definite article as ancient Greek does. Is this an example of why people claim that compared to Greek Latin is a nuts and bolts language?
Well, for starters, such a sentence wouldn’t have a definite article in Greek either. That’s not where the ambiguity lies. Or perhaps it will mean “I see a red house painting a man"?
But the best rendering is unquestionably the first (or e.g. virum quendam video rubram pingentem domum). The other two are merely pedantic.
This kind of linguistic problem was exploited by oracular utterances such as (i) Aio te, Aeacida, Romanos vincere posse ~ I say that you, descendant of Aeacus, can defeat the Romans (or is it …the Romans can defeat you).
Changing a colour is seen in Vergil: (ii) sanguineis frontem moris et tempora pingit ~ she stained his brow and temples with red mulberries. i.e. she stained his brow red with mulberries [Verg. Ecl. 6 22]. If the brow were already red we would have; (iii)sanguineam frontem moris pingit ~ she stained his red brow with mulberries.
Therefore we can say (iv)pingentem domum rubram ~ painting the red house but (v)pingentem domum pigmento rubro ~ painting the house red.
However, your example does look overloaded with accusatives so I’d follow the recommendation of my prose composition book and change the voice thus: (vi)video domum rubram pingi a homine ~ I see that a red house is being painted by a man. (vii)video domum a homine pingi pigmento rubro ~ I see that a house is being painted with red colouring by a man.
For my fourpennyw’th on this old topic. In the first case (“the red house”) the adjective “red” is ATTRIBUTIVE, while in the second case (“the house red”) the adjective “red” is PREDICATIVE. Attributive because redness is an attribute of the house, predicative because here red is telling us something new about the house. I think, maybe wrongly, that in Latin when an adjective is positioned BEFORE its noun it is predicative, if positioned AFTER its noun it is attributive. So I guess “I saw a man painting his house red” would be “vidi hominem rubram pingentem domum”, while “I saw a man painting his red house” would be “vidi hominem domum rubram pingentem”. Putting the adjective ahead of its noun is emphasizing that it is important rather than a mere attribute of the noun (I’m sure people will be able to find many counter-examples to this “rule”, but I think I’m basically right).