The Subject

The subject is one of the two main parts of the sentence. It denotes the thing whose action or characteristic is expressed by the predicate. It may be expressed by different parts of speech, the most frequent ones being: a noun in the common case, a personal pronoun in the nominative case, a demonstrative pronoun, a substantivised adjective, a numeral, an infinitive, and a gerund. It may also be expressed by a phrase.

The subject performs two main functions: categorial and relative. The categorial function of the subject consists in naming the possessor of the predicative feature expressed by the predicate. The relative function of the subject consists in its being the original element in the syntagmatic development of the sentence, thus constituting the predicate’s left environment as opposed to its right environment.

As it has already been mentioned, the subject always goes with the predicate, therefore, one-member nominal sentences do not have a subject.

The Predicate

The predicate denotes the action or property of the thing expressed by the subject. It can be expressed by numerous ways. The predicate expresses the predicative feature which characterized the object expressed by the subject, thus it realizes the categorial function. Being a link between the subject and the right environment of the verb, it performs the relative function.

According to morphological characteristics, four types of predicates can be singled out:

verbal;

nominal;

phraseological;

contaminated.

The predicate can be subject to the syntactic process of complication, thus, according to their structural characteristics, predicates can be simple and complicated. Therefore, eight types of predicates can be identified.

Simple verbal I took an apple.

Simple nominal The coincidence was extraordinary.

Simple He gave me a smile.

phraseological

Simple contaminated He sat motionless.

Complicated verbal The girl began to cry.

Complicated He turned out to be a thief.

nominal

Complicated You should have taken a look at the map.

phraseological

Complicated He seemed to be lying asleep.

contaminated

(Mind that Prof. Ilyish’s idea of simple and compound nominal predicate is different from the traditional view. NB what he calls double predicate - Catherine's blood ran cold with the horrid suggestions which naturally sprang from these words. (J. AUSTEN))

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