Predicate (grammar)

The predicate in traditional grammar is the second part of a clause or sentence, the first being the subject.^[1] A predicate completes an idea about the subject, such as what it does or what it is like.^[2][3]

She dances. - verb-only predicate

Ben reads the book. - verb + direct object predicate

Ben's mother, Felicity, gave me a present. - verb + indirect object + direct object predicate

She listened to the radio. - verb + prepositional object predicate

They elected him president. - verb + object + predicative noun predicate

She met him in the park. - verb + object + adjunct predicate

She is in the park. - verb + predicative prepositional phrase predicate

The predicate provides information about the subject.

The subject NP is shown in green, and the predicate VP in blue.

There is a quite different theory of sentence structure, called dependency structure grammar. This puts the finite verb (= conjugated verb) as the root of all sentence structure. It rejects the binary NP-VP division.

1. ↑ A good introduction is: Crystal, David 1995. The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language. Cambridge University Press, p220. ISBN 0-521-40179-8
2. ↑ Allerton D. 1979. Essentials of grammatical theory. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
3. ↑ Huddleston, R. 1988. English grammar: an outline. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.