Subject and predicate are linguistic concepts related to the study of sentence structure. Both of these members are recognized as the main ones and represent the grammatical basis of the sentence, its semantic center.
There is a close grammatical and lexical connection between them. Often you can find the predicate in a sentence through its relation to the subject, and the subject through its connection with the predicate.
Semantic features of the predicate
If the subject names an object, then the predicate names the feature that characterizes this object. It can be some action, state, property, quality, quantity, generic concept or belonging. Here are some examples.
- "Father went to the window." The predicate "approached" expresses the action of the object named by the subject "father".
- "Veronica was happy." The compound predicate "was happy" denotes the state of the object expressed by the subject "Veronica".
- "Raindrops shimmer like gems in the sun." Here the predicate is the phrase “shimmer with gems”, it characterizes the property of raindrops onsun.
- "The clothes were worn." The predicate "turned out to be worn" expressed the quality of the object indicated by the subject "clothing".
- "Three times three is nine." Here both main terms are expressed by numerals. The predicate expressing quantity is the word "nine".
- "Potato is a vegetable crop". The predicate "vegetable culture" is a generic concept.
- "The bow is Anyutkin, the shoes are mine." In this sentence with two stems, the predicates "Anyutkin" and "my" are expressed by the noun and pronoun, respectively, and they denote ownership.
Three semantic tasks of the predicate in the sentence
What does an object do? What is happening to him? Who is he or what is he? What is he like? - here are the questions that can be asked to the predicate. Thus, this sentence member is capable of solving three main tasks:
- Names the action that the subject produces: "Pain subsided."
- Names the action that the subject experiences on itself: "The house was completely inhabited by people."
- Fixes the subject as the owner of a certain attribute: “His intentions were serious.”
As a predicate
Most often, the role of the predicate in the sentence is the verb. The predicate may in this case consist of one or more verbs in the personal form. Example: "The bird sang - filled in."
The predicate may well be expressed by other parts of speech and syntactic constructions.
- Nouns: "London is the capital of Great Britain."
- Adjectives: "Southern night - warm, velvet."
- Numerals: "Five five - twenty five".
- In adverbs: “Hands together, feet apart.”
- Communion: “Tea is drunk, cheesecakes are eaten.”
- Pronoun: "Ten percent of the deal is mine."
- Phraseological turn: "Frightened, Kostya gave a strekach, only they saw him."
- A whole sentence: "Good he alth is when you forget about it." In this case, the predicate is a construction consisting of the sentence “this is when you forget about it.”
Varieties of the predicate
It can be both simple and compound.
The simple is called a simple verbal predicate, since it is expressed by verbs in its various forms - in the indicative mood in all three tenses (present, future, past), in the imperative and conditional moods, in the indefinite form, in non-conjugated form of the verb "to eat".
A compound predicate combines two elements, one of which is the main one, and the other is an auxiliary one. Such a predicate is divided into two types - a compound nominal and a compound verb. In the first, the connective part of the predicate is expressed by one of the names - a noun, numeral, adjective, adverb, pronoun, participle, and in the second - by an infinitive. Examples:
- "Vera Ivanovna started lecturing me." Composite vb. the predicate is expressed by the verb female. kind, unit hours, past time "accepted" and the infinitive "read".
- "The holiday will turn outfabulous!" Here is the composite names. the predicate is a combination of the verb future. time, 3 l., units h. "it will turn out" and the adjective "gorgeous".
Homogeneous predicates
Homogeneous are those members of a sentence that equally refer to the same word. For example, homogeneous predicates are lexemes that refer to the same subject and answer one question. They can be joined by unions or separated by commas, marked with enumerative intonation. Examples:
- "He begged, pleaded, urged, but she didn't flinch or give in." The predicates “asked, begged, persuaded” are homogeneous. They, answering the question "what did you do?", refer to the subject "he". The predicates "did not f alter and did not give in" are also homogeneous, they are connected by a union and refer to the subject "she". We ask them a question: “What did you do?”
- "Maxim saw Lily and stood up in his tracks." In this sentence, the simple predicate "saw" and the stable expression "stand up as if rooted to the spot" are homogeneous. They both refer to the subject "Maxim" and answer one question: "What did you do?"
In syntactic analysis, we always underline the predicate with two lines, no matter how many of them there are in the sentence.
