Every sentence must include a subject and a verb. The subject tells who or what, and the verb describes an action or condition. Subject and verb agree in number and person. Grammatically, the part of the sentence with the verb is called the predicate.
A complete sentence includes a subject and a verb. The verb is in the part of the sentence called the predicate. A predicate can be thought of as a verb phrase.
A sentence can be very simple, with just one or two words as subject and one or two words as predicate.
Sometimes, in a command, a subject is āunderstood,ā rather than written or spoken.
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Itās is a contraction of it is.
Its (without an apostrophe) is the possessive of the pronoun it.
Look at these examples of short sentences:
Sentence | Subject | Predicate, with main verb(s) underlined |
I ate. | I | ate |
They ran away. | They | ran away |
Itās OK. | It | is OK |
Go and find the cat! | (You) | go and find the cat |
In addition to looking at subject vs. object in a sentence, we can also look at subject vs. predicate.
As we have seen, the subject is the noun or pronoun ādoingāthe action in the sentence. The complete subject includes that noun/pronoun plus its adjectives and describing words, while the simple subject is the noun/pronoun alone. The simple subject is usually one word, except in the case of multi-part nouns like āice cream,ā āRosa Parks,ā or āDoctor Martinez.ā
EXAMPLE: The exhausted, flu-ridden student is spending the whole day in bed.
Complete subject: The exhausted, flu-ridden student
Simple subject: student
*Note that the simple subject is āstudent,ā not āthe student.ā The simple subject excludes articles like a/an/the or possessives like my/her/their, even if they are right next to the noun.
The predicate is the verb the subject is ādoing.ā The complete predicate includes the verbs and its modifiers (for example, adverbs or prepositional phrases). The simple predicate is just the verb or verb phrase (which can consist of multiple words in the case of phrases like āam sleepingā or āgetting upā).
EXAMPLE: The exhausted, flu-ridden student is spending the whole day in bed.
Complete predicate: is spending the whole day in bed
Simple predicate: is spending
In more complicated sentences, identifying the subject or predicate can be challenging. For example, what are the simple subject and simple predicate in the sentence below?
EXAMPLE: After his mom and dadās anniversary dinner, Raj went to his neighborās house.
There are many different nouns in the sentence, and multiple people (the mom, the dad, Raj, and the neighbor). But there is only one verbāwentā which is the simple predicate in this sentence. And the one ādoingā the verb is the subject: Raj. In this case, because there are no descriptive words attached to Raj, the subject and simple subject are the same.
What about the subject in the example below?
EXAMPLE: Clean your room.
Because this sentence is a command, we understand that the person is talking directly to someone ā therefore, the subject is āyou,ā even though we donāt see that word in the sentence!
In other sentences, we may see a compound subject, with two or more simple subjects connected by a conjunction like nor/or/and.
EXAMPLES: The doctor and nurse worked together to help the patient.
Neither Canada nor Mexico has a queen.
Sometimes a subject or predicate is a long phrase or clause.
Some sentences have more than one subject or predicate, or even a predicate within a predicate.
Sentence | Subject(s) | Predicate(s), with main verb(s) underlined |
My friend from work had a bad car accident. | My friend from work | had a bad car accident |
John, his sister, and I plan to ride our bikes across the country this summer. | John, his sister, and I | plan to ride our bikes across the country this summer |
I did so much for them, and they didnāt even thank me.* | I; they | did so much for them; didnāt even thank me |
She wrote a letter that explained the problem.** | She | wrote a letter that explained the problem |
*This sentence consists of two clauses, and each clause has its own subject and its own predicate.
**In this sentence, that explained the problem is part of the predicate. It is also a type of subordinate clause, called a relative clause, with its own subject and predicate.
Subjects and verbs must agree in number and person. This means that different subjects take different forms of a verb.
KEEP IN MIND . . .
The third person singular subject takes a different verb form than other subjects.
With regular verbs, simply add -s to the singular third person verb, as shown below:
Singular | Plural | |||
Subject | Verb | Subject | Verb | |
(first person) (second person) (third person) | I you he/she/it | play play plays | we you they | play play play |
Some verbs are irregular, so simply adding -s doesnāt work. For example:
verb | form for third person singular subject |
have do fix | has does fixes |
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The verbs be, have, and do can be either main verbs or helping verbs.
Look for subject-verb agreement in the following sentences:
Subject-Verb Agreement for the Verb Be
Present | Past | ||
I am you are he/she/it is | we are you are they are | I was you were they were | we were you were they were |
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The verb be is very irregular. Its forms change with several subjects, in both present and past tense.
Subject-verb agreement can be tricky. Be careful of these situations:
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