Parts of a Sentence: Subject and Predicate



PARTS OF A SENTENCE: SUBJECT AND PREDICATE



Key words: subject, predicate

In traditional grammar, a sentence consists of two main parts – subject and predicate.

The subject of a sentence is the person, place, thing, or idea that is doing something, or we are talking about. In other words, we must have a subject to speak or write about, while the predicate tells something about the subject. Let us consider the following sentence:

Ravi sells computers.

This sentence is about a person, Ravi, and it tells us what Ravi does. Ravi is therefore the subject of the sentence. Some other examples -

Raman plays football.
Sudha and her friends play on the ground.

In all the above sentences, the subjects are marked in bold letters. Typically, the subject is a noun, a noun phrase, or a pronoun. To determine the subject of a sentence, we first identify the verb and then make a question by placing "who?" or "what?" before it -- the answer is the subject.

For example, in the sentence Ravi sells computers, we ask – “who” sells computers? The answer is Ravi. Hence, Ravi is the subject.

Another example,

Her name is Aruna.

In the above sentence, we are talking about a girl, Aruna; while describing her, we make a statement - Her name is Aruna. Hence, Her name is the subject of our thought. Applying the same logic, in the sentence My name is Khan, My name is the subject.

In Imperative sentences, it is understood that the subject is always you, since in this type of sentences the person that is making the command or request is always asking you to do something. For example,

(You) Sit down, please.
(You) Go to the class.

The predicate usually comes after the subject. Once we determine the subject, we can easily find the predicate. A verb is the main part of the predicate, and to complete the sentence the verb may require other sentence elements also.

Ravi laughs –predicate - verb only (laughs)
Ravi collects stamps –  predicate - verb (collects) + other elements
My friend gave me many stamps –  predicate - verb (gave) + other elements

The predicate usually comes after the subject. Once we find the subject, we can easily find the predicate. The predicate would tell us what the subject does (or did or will do). Let's take another look at our first example (the predicate is underlined):

Ravi sells computers.

In this sentence, as we have seen, the subject is Ravi. The predicate, sells computers, describes what Ravi does. The verb here is the action verb sell.

Let’s take another example:

You are not well.

In this sentence again, the subject is You. The predicate, are not well, tells us about the state of the subject, You. The verb here is are.

The predicate is the part of a sentence that provides information about the subject, such as what the subject is, what the subject is like, or describes its activities. Verb is the main part of the predicate, which also includes all the other words not attached to the subject. The other nouns in the sentence that fall in the predicate are termed as Objects.
As we see in the above examples, the predicate must contain a verb and to complete the sentence the verb may require other sentence elements also, such as objects:
Ravi laughs.  Verb only (laughs) predicate
Ravi collects stamps.  verb (collects) + direct object (stamps) predicate
My friend gave me some stamps.  verb (gave) + indirect object (me) + direct object (some stamps) predicate

It is to be noted that the subject does not always come first. There are situations in which the subject appears after the verb instead of before it. For example,

In many sentences beginning with here or there:

Here comes the bus. (The subject bus appears after the verb comes.)
There were ten passengers in the bus. (The subject, ten passengers, is placed after the verb were.)

In most questions:

Are you ready? (The subject you appears after the verb are.)
Did Ravi forget to feed birds again? (The subject Ravi is placed after the first half of the verb did forget.)

In all the above sentences, the subject is in bold letter and predicate is underlined.

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