"What Is a Predicate in Grammar?": Oregon State Guide to Grammar

Building on his previous video about the grammatical subject, Senior Lecturer J.T. Bushnell offers a functional definition of the predicate, explains its catch-all function, leads viewers through several variations in its form, and distinguishes the essential predicating verb(s) from the “other stuff,” using several funny examples. This video series is designed to help high school and college students make sense of difficult terms and confusing grammatical conventions, identify parts of speech and grammatical constructions, and advance their awareness of their own linguistic intuition.
The School of Writing, Literature, and Film at Oregon State University sponsors this series. For further explanations of grammar issues and writing tips, please subscribe to the free SWLF KZbin Channel or visit liberalarts.or.... In the comments section below, feel free to suggest other terms you would like us to cover. Liking, sharing, and commenting on these videos will help us to build a rich digital learning environment around grammar and language.
Below are a few more videos in this series. If there are topics you'd like to see us cover in the future, please let us know in the comments!
"What Is Grammar?": • An Introduction to The...
"What Is a Noun?": • "What Is a Noun?": Ore...
"What Is a Verb?": • "What Is a Verb?": Ore...
"What Is a Subject?": • "What Is a Subject in ...
“What Is a Phrase?”: • "What Is a Phrase in G...
“What Is a Clause?”: • "What Is a Clause in G...
“When to Use Commas”: • "When To Use Commas": ...
“When NOT to Use Commas”: • "When NOT to Use Comma...
“What Is the Oxford Comma (And Is It Really Optional)?”: • "What Is the Oxford Co...
"What Is Passive Voice?": • "What Is Passive Voice...
"What Is Parallelism?": • "What Is Parallelism?"...
"What Is Gender-Neutral Language?": • "What Is Gender-Neutra...
“What Are Dialects?”: • "What Are Dialects?": ...
“What Is Code-Meshing?”: • "What Is Code-Meshing?...
“What Is Singular They?”: • "What Is Singular They...
“How to Use a Semicolon”: • "How to Use a Semicolo...
“How to Use a Colon”: • "How to Use a Colon": ...
“How to Use Apostrophes”: • "How to Use Apostrophe...
“What Is a Comma Splice?”: • "What Is a Comma Splic...
“What Is Syntax?”: • "What Is Syntax in Gra...
"What Is Mood in Grammar?": • "What Is Mood in Gramm...
"What Is (AND ISN'T) Standard Written English?": • "What Is (AND ISN'T) S...

[@SWLF]

If you liked this video, let us know by dropping us a comment, asking a question, or sharing your thoughts this way of identifying predicates. Doing so will help to establish this new video series as a rich digital learning environment. Thanks for reading, everybody!

[@Khatoon170]

Predicate is part of sentence, or clause , that tells subject is doing or what subject is . Example cat is sleeping in sun . Clause sleeping in sun predicate, it dictation what cat is doing . Boy walks to school . Types of predicate are simple predicate main verb or single and auxiliaries. Complex verb plus all dependent. Compound predicate gives two or more detail about same subject and , has two or more verbs that joined by conjunction. Thank you for your wonderful educational literary channel.

[@missmiss6516]

Can't wait for the clauses and phrases video.

[@SWLF]

Thanks so much, miss miss! We're excited to build upon these foundational videos in more complex lessons soon!

[@alkamel98]

Thank you guys, you are making English grammar makes sense for me as foreigners.

[@SWLF]

Thanks so much, Hashim! We'll be putting out more videos in that series soon!

[@TheAwesomeGingerGuy]

Transcript: Being able to identify subjects and predicates will help you with many of the mechanical errors people often struggle with, like comma splices, sentence fragments, and agreement. Really, these are all just ways of asking writers to stay true to the subject-predicate relationship. As I mentioned in the last video, the subject is usually a noun, but not always. The predicate, however, always contains a verb - one that goes with the subject. That’s the basis of the relationship. Sometimes the verb stands alone, and in that case, it is, by itself, the entire predicate. In “The man laughs,” the predicate is “laughs.” That’s the verb that goes with the subject. Other times, there’s more than one verb that goes with the subject. “The man laughs, squints, snorts, and shrieks.” The predicate is all of them. There’s also usually other stuff that goes with the verb or verbs, extra information about when, where, or in what manner it occurs. “The women laughed uncontrollably for several minutes on the playground slide.” The predicate is the verb and all that other stuff. It’s basically everything except the subject. But the verb is so important in the construction that it has a special name, the predicating verb. It’s the key to the predicate, the element that completes the relationship with the subject. We can see that relationship by the way the subject controls the form of the predicating verb: two women laugh, one woman laughs. So, a fair definition for a predicate might be: ‘tensed verbs which define or comment on the subject, and everything that goes with such verbs.’ That inclusiveness can make it pretty easy to identify the predicate because we don’t really have to distinguish its pieces from one another. Let’s take our example with multiple predicating verbs: “The man laughs, squints, snorts, and shrieks.” And let’s modify it a little: “The man laughs, squinting, snorting, and shrieking.” The meaning is basically the same, and all the words are still part of the predicate, but those last three verbs, “squinting,” “snorting,” and “shrieking,” are no longer predicating verbs. We can tell because the subject doesn’t control their form: “He laughs, squinting, snorting, and shrieking” - “They laugh, squinting, snorting, and shrieking.” Only the tensed verb changes. The others stay the same. Because of that, we could shift them to a different position in the sentence if we like: “Squinting, snorting, and shrieking, the man laughs.” They’re still part of the predicate, even when they occur before the subject, but they behave differently from predicating verbs. So, although we can lump these elements together, it’s useful to recognize the difference between the essential predicating verb or verbs and the extra stuff. That difference can help you make sense of other grammatical constructions like clauses and phrases, which we’ll talk about in future videos, as well as the mechanical issues that most people think of when they say the word “grammar.”

[@SWLF]

Thanks, K! You can find transcripts to all of our videos here as well: liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/oregon-state-guide-grammar Look for more soon!

[@nualearningenglish8797]

Excellent , sir

[@SWLF]

Thanks so much, NUA Learning English!

[@riverIl0719]

*Awwwww! This is excellent. It helps me understand the whole subject-predicate better, so thanks!*

[@SWLF]

Awesome! Thanks so much, Phil! We're so stoked to have you supporting the new series!

[@lebaotramnguyen7077]

Thank you for the video! It is great.

[@SWLF]

Thanks so much, @lebaotramnguyen7077! We hope you enjoy the other videos in our series as well!

[@TravelHubv]

excellent video and we can compare this definition with the predicate used in mathematics, particularly in first-order logic.

[@SWLF]

What a great comment, science and life! Care to elaborate?

[@NaglaaAdel517]

Thank u 🥰

[@SWLF]

You are most welcome, @NaglaaAdel517 !

[@walidbenhammou4387]

could you please make a video about all type of phrases, including adjectival phrase and adverbial phrase

[@SWLF]

Thanks for the suggestion, Oualid! We posted a video called "What is a Phrase?" last week, and we hope you'll check it out!

[@chawanwinchester3201]

This is very helpful 🙂

[@SWLF]

Thanks so much, Chawan! We hope you enjoy the other videos in our series as well!

[@arande3]

Dragon; the car is walk-a-thon proof (kk). The car is a woman. Laugh talk dog [sic] haha. Ducks.

[@Robbieparham]

E

[@Robbieparham]

Hihihih😊😊