What do word nerds do in their free time? Sometimes they tell jokes (or cut and paste witty witticisms into their posts). As per one shiny example:
Klaussz: Did you hear about the constipated mathematician?
Scooter: He must have had bad dandruff!
Klaussz: What the **** is wrong with you, man? No! He worked it out with a pencil.
Actually, word nerds, grammarians and overall spaznuts like yours truly like going though dictionaries, reading interesting blogs on linguistics,, and dissecting languages as a whole and how they reflect on cultures, etcetera, and so on, ad nauseam.
Earlier, while looking up something on predicates, I stumbled upon a post on some random site from an old friend of mine who is a walking dictionary in both English and Korean.
Growing up, my teachers told me that a sentence only required a subject (pronoun or noun) and a verb (action word). But as I got older, things seemed to get dicier with the official explanation. Now it was all about a subject and a predicate.
To me, predicates just seemed like snooty verbs, a pack of wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing. Or, you know, something like that.
Anyway, my pal Gary Rector had this to say about the topic at hand, and I thought I’d share it with all the other hosebags out there who share my fascination with words.
The predicate of a sentence is the verb and its objects, complements, and modifiers (if any). Look at these example sentences:
John is sleeping. [The verb and predicate are identical: is sleeping.]
Mary likes coffee. [The verb is likes. The predicate is likes coffee.]
Sally takes her coffee with cream and sugar. [The verb is takes. The predicate is takes her coffee with cream and sugar.]
answered Mar 14 ’15 at 3:45
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