The predicate answers questions ... or How to highlight the grammatical basis of a sentence

What is called a predicate? What kinds of predicates are there in Russian? What is the grammatical basis and how to find it in the sentence? What questions does the predicate and the subject answer? These are the themes that children learn little by little during the long school years of schooling. And this is no wonder, because the topic is deep and has many pitfalls.

The grammatical basis

So, how to recognize the basis of a sentence? First you need to understand the definition of the grammatical basis. In fact, this is the main part of any proposal that determines the subject, its operation and what it is. Namely, this subject and predicate. In school it is acceptable to consider them as a phrase, but if you dig deeper, then in linguistics this is not quite so. Questions subject and predicate sound like this:

• The subject is "who" or "what." It can be any object, person, animal, living and inanimate being and pronoun, which is used in the nominative case.
• The second part of the grammatical basis is the predicate. Answering the questions "what is he" or "who he is", "what does", "what is the subject", "what happens to him".

Examples of the main part of the sentence

For example, you can take a few simple suggestions.

• "The boy (who?) Is coming (what does? - here the predicate is a verb) home."
• "He is sad (what happens to the subject?)." In this example, the predicate is expressed in an adverb, namely the state of the main character.
• "He is small (what is the subject?)". The predicate here is a short adjective.
• "Oleg is a disciple (who is he?)." In this example, the predicate is expressed by an animate noun.
• "Baikal is a big lake". Here an inanimate noun is used, and the predicate answers the questions "what is" or "what is it".

Composite verb predicate

A simple predicate, or as it is also called a verb, can be expressed in any inclination. It is always a verb, as is clear from its name. This predicate answers questions posed at any time. Not always a simple predicate is expressed in one word, for example:

1. "I will sing". "I will sing" - a simple predicate expressed by a verb in the form of a complex future tense.
2. As if, as if, exactly, as if , used with a predicate - model particles that do not separate with commas, as in the case of comparative unions.
3. "She went to the door when she stopped." Here, "was" - a model part, indicating the action that began, but did not happen. Such parts do not distinguish the commas, unlike the introductory words, such as happened and happens , which have the value of regular repetition of actions.
4. In the case of phraseology as a predicate, in order to distinguish it from a composite type, it is necessary to remember the following: it is easy to replace the first with one word, but you can not put "to be" instead (in any of its forms).

The compound nominal predicate

This type of predicate, in turn, is divided into subtypes: it can be verbal, nominal or trinomial. These parts of the sentence can consist of two or more words, which determine the type.

The main and auxiliary parts, which are expressed by words denoting the action, form a compound verbal predicate. One of them is always used in an indefinite form, and the second is expressed by verbs denoting the beginning, continuation and termination of the action. In this capacity, the words should be used, glad, able, ready and others, which are short adjectives. Also this part is expressed by words denoting states having the meaning of possibility, desirability and necessity, as well as giving an emotional evaluation of the action.

The nominal predicate answers questions about the actions of the object and in its composition can have a noun and an adjective in the nominative and instrumental cases, as well as participles, numerals, adverbs and pronouns, which are used together with auxiliary verbs.

A complex predicate is the union between a verbal and a nominal predicate.