Subject and Predicate Flashcards
What is a predicate test
A predicate always contains a real verb
What is the subject?
A subject is a grammatical concept; it is not about the meaning or main idea of the sentence but rather the noun, pronoun, or something else which acts as either noun or pronoun
What are some guidelines to locate a subject?
- The subject is usually a noun, pronoun, but sometimes it is a gerund, infinitive, or a phrase or clause
- One good way to find the main subject is to find the main verb and ask what or who is doing the action described by the verb
- A subject can consist of two or more things joined by and. For instance, Joe and Maria could be a subject or, Dancing, drinking, and eating
- If you have a subordinate clause joined by a subordinating conjunction, you want the subject that is not in the subordinate clause - the “main” subject will be in the “main” clause of the sentence
Find the subject
None of the guests have arrived
None; guests cant be the subject as it part of a prepositional phrase
Find the subject
Although rapper Tupac Shakur died in 1996, his music has been released on no fewer than eight posthumous albums
music is the subject, as ‘although’ introduced an independent clause which cannot contain the main subject
Find the subject
Aside the highway was the wreckage from the crash.
wreckage is the subject, as there are multiple prepositional phrases in the sentence which cannot contain the main subject
What is a sentence fragment
They are a group of words that cannot stand alone. It is not a complete thought; it does not contain an independent clause; Also when a group of words lacks a verb we’ve got a fragment e.g.
- Under the bridge at the edge of the town
- If it’s true that Chandler was responsible for the project’s failure (by the second sentence, I wanted to signify that fragments might contains words that are not necessarily prepositional phrases)
