What time did you take the dog out?
No matter which type of sentence you’re dealing with, make sure you use the correct subject and object pronouns. The subject pronouns are used only as the subject of a sentence or clause, while object pronouns are commonly used with the predicate.
How do you identify the predicate in a sentence?
Simply put, the complete predicate includes all the words in a sentence that don’t relate to the subject. In a sentence with only one clause, if you can identify the subject, you can also identify the predicate by whatever is not the subject.
In the middle of a cold night during winter break, they quietly went to the dark basement.
In this example, “they” is the subject, so every word except “they” is the complete predicate. That includes the prepositional phrases that describe when and where the action took place, all the adjectives that describe the prepositional objects, and the adverb that describes the verb.
If a sentence has more than one clause, it will have more than one predicate because each clause requires at least one predicate.
When the ring was destroyed, the hobbits returned to their home. In this example, the main predicate is “returned to their home,” which is connected to the main subject “the hobbits.” However, the subordinate clause “when the ring was destroyed” has its own separate predicate that includes the words “when” and “was destroyed,” which are connected to the clause’s subject “the ring.”
Be careful with adjectives and adjective phrases that describe the subject. These are part of the subject, not the predicate.
At the age of thirty, Charlie had never eaten a pear. In this example, the adjective phrase “at the age of thirty” is not part of the predicate because it describes the subject, Charlie, instead of the action of eating a pear. In this case, the complete predicate is only “had never eaten a pear.”
