Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The predicate is a verb phrase that consists of more than one word. In the backyard, the dog barked and howled at the cat. This simple sentence has one independent clause which contains one subject, dog, and one predicate, barked and howled at the cat. This predicate has two verbs, known as a compound predicate: barked and howled. (This should ...
In linguistics, a verb phrase (VP) is a syntactic unit composed of a verb and its arguments except the subject of an independent clause or coordinate clause.Thus, in the sentence A fat man quickly put the money into the box, the words quickly put the money into the box constitute a verb phrase; it consists of the verb put and its arguments, but not the subject a fat man.
A verb together with its dependents, excluding its subject, may be identified as a verb phrase (although this concept is not acknowledged in all theories of grammar [23]). A verb phrase headed by a finite verb may also be called a predicate. The dependents may be objects, complements, and modifiers (adverbs or adverbial phrases).
A clause (simplex) typically contains a predication structure with a subject noun phrase and a finite verb. Although the subject is usually a noun phrase, other kinds of phrases (such as gerund phrases) work as well, and some languages allow subjects to be omitted. In the examples below, the subject of the outmost clause simplex is in italics ...
— Verb-plus-prepositional-object predicate. She is in the park. — Verb-plus-predicative-prepositional-phrase predicate. She met him in the park. — Verb-plus-direct-object-plus-adjunct predicate. The predicate provides information about the subject, such as what the subject is, what the subject is doing, or what the subject is like. The ...
In the most typical cases, the predicand corresponds to the subject of a clause, and the predicate corresponds to a verb phrase (VP) that is the head of the clause. But there are also form-meaning mismatches, where the predicand is not a subject or where the predicate is not the head of the clause. Also, not every utterance has a predicand.
In the examples above, the arguments are noun phrases (NPs), but arguments can in many cases be other categories, e.g. Winning the prize made our training worthwhile. – Subject is a non-finite verb phrase That he came late did not surprise us. – Subject is a clause Sam persuaded us to contribute to the cause. – Object is a non-finite verb ...
Zero valency does not occur in English; in some languages such as Mandarin Chinese, weather verbs like snow(s) take no subject or object. Intransitive (valency = 1, monovalent): the verb only has a subject. For example: "he runs", "it falls". Transitive (valency = 2, divalent): the verb has a subject and a direct object. For example: "she eats ...