Subject and predicate
The sentence in English consists two parts:a subject and predicate. Look at the following sentences:
Boys play.
Nalini danced.
They fled.
It shines.
She sings.
In the above two-word sentences, the first word is the subject and the second is the predicate. Here the subject consists of a single word,and so does the predicate.
The sentence
The subject in a sentence may be one of the following:
(a) A noun(singular or plural)
Raju plays.
Birds sing.
(b) A pronoune
She loves music.
They speak English.
(c) A noun phrase:
The sun rises in the east.
The new books are costly.
(d) A gerund:
Walking is a good exercise.
Smoking is injurious to health.
(e) A to-infinitive:
To drive very fast is dangerous.
To forgive is divine.
(f) A clause :
That he is a fool is known to all.
What she says is stupid.
(g) The anticipatory or introductory it:
It is easy to please him.
It is not difficult to learn driving.
(h) The introductory there:
There are 500000 books in our library.
There is still scope for improvement.
The predicate
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The predicate in a sentence consists of the following:
(a) A verb:
Australian travel.
The moon shines.
(b) A verb + direct object:
He burned his fingers.
I like ice cream.
(c) A verb + compliment:
Jayan is a teacher.
The dream came true.
(d) A verb+indirect object+direct object:
His uncle gave her a present.
I asked him a question.
(e) A verb+direct object +object complement:
We elected him president.
They made me captain.
(f) A verb + adverb:
Rajaji spoke slowly.
The minister arrived late.
(g) A verb+ adverbial phrase:
His uncle lives in Mumbai.
The meeting is on Thursday.
(h) A verb+noun clause.
This is what he meant.
The fact is that he is not frank.
(I) A verb+ adverbial clause
He failed because he had not studied.
The watch broke when it fell on the marble floor.
There are also other items possible in the predicate like auxiliary verbs. We shall see them in the following chapters.
