Clause elements: Subject and predicate

They heard footsteps… and a howling sound… - Maria is telling a ghost story. This sentence consists of a group of words that can stand on their own, that go together grammatically: a clause. Clauses are built of different elements, each of which has a function in the clause: clause elements. Let’s take a closer look at how a clause is constructed. To do that, we note what clause elements are present, and how they are working together.

We analyse the clause. One clause element is more important than the others: the predicate. The predicate always contains a word that usually expresses an action or an activity of some kind: a verb. Here are some verbs. Tell, scare, listen, be, become.

To find the predicate in a clause, you should simply look for the verb. If it’s hard to find the verb, you can ask yourself: What is happening? Maria is telling a ghost story. What is happening? Is telling.

There’s your predicate! Sometimes the verb joins with other small words, and together they form the predicate. Maria makes up a story. What’s happening? Makes up.

This little word belongs to the verb. up It’s a particle. Sometimes there is actually more than one verb in the predicate, as in this clause, where there are four: Lingo would like to try to scare Maria. Sometimes a predicate on its own can count as a clause. Sit!

But most of the time, another clause element is needed, which describes who or what the clause is about. The subject. The subject is most often the one doing what the predicate describes. Maria is telling a ghost story. The easiest way to find the subject is by asking who or what is doing what’s described in the predicate.

Who is telling ghost stories? Maria. Sometimes, the subject isn’t the one doing something, but the one that something is happening to. Lingo is scared. The question still works: Who is scared?

Lingo. Here are some more clauses: Telling ghost stories is exciting. What’s exciting? Telling ghost stories. That Lingo hid surprised Maria.

What surprised Maria? That Lingo hid. The long and gruesome ghost story scares Lingo. What scares Lingo? The long and gruesome ghost story.

The subjects in these examples are rather different, aren’t they? A subject can be a noun, together with some words belonging to it. This is a noun phrase. A subject can also be a person’s name, or a word that replaces a name: a pronoun. It can also be a verb in this form: a gerund, or a clause that cannot work on its own - a subordinate clause.

What all these subjects have in common is that they go together with a predicate, and answer the question who or what? The subject is almost as important to the clause as the predicate. It’s so important, that sometimes we actually add a subject even when there shouldn’t be one. It's raining. What’s raining?

The rain? Not really... In English, we need a subject for the clause to be grammatically correct. Because of this, we add an empty subject. A dummy subject.

In many other languages, there’s no need for this. - Hey there, don’t scare my friend! - The ghost disappeared! - The ghost - subject. Disappeared - predicate. Frightfully simple!