Formas De Expresión Escrita

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Principio del formulario
Final del formulario
Predicates
A predicate describes the subject or tells what the subject does. All sentences havepredicates. The predicate is usually the last part of a sentence. It often starts with a verb. Sometimes the verb is all of the predicate.
For example: The duck swims.
* "The duck" is the subject.* "swims" is the predicate.
* "swims" is a verb.
* Because it is the verb that starts the predicate, we call it the main verb.
Sometimes the verb is only the start of the predicate. Thepredicate can also include adjectives or adverbs that change the verb. It can include a direct object that the subject acts on directly, or an indirect object that the subject acts on indirectly. Thepredicate may include a preposition or two that explain more about the verb or other parts of the predicate.
You may go back to the page on subjects as a part of the sentence, or forward to learn aboutword functions.
A simple predicate consists of only a verb, verb string, or compound verb:
* The glacier melted.
* The glacier has been melting.
* The glacier melted, broke apart, andslipped into the sea.
A compound predicate consists of two (or more) such predicates connected:
* The glacier began to slip down the mountainside and eventually crushed some of the village'soutlying buildings.
A complete predicate consists of the verb and all accompanying modifiers and other words that receive the action of a transitive verb or complete its meaning. The followingdescription of predicates comes from The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers (examples our own):
With an intransitive verb, objects and complements are included in the predicate. (The glacier ismelting.) With a transitive verb, objects and object complements are said to be part of the predicate. (The slow moving glacier wiped out an entire forest. It gave the villagers a lot of problems.) With a...