"She writes the contracts": the verb expresses an action of the subject
The concept of predicate comes from praedicātum , a late Latin word. The term is used in the field of grammar to refer to the syntactic function that the verbal phrase develops .
The subject and the predicate
Before moving forward with the idea of a verbal predicate , it is important to keep in mind that in grammatical sentences the subject and the predicate can be identified. The subject is the one who develops the action or from whom something is expressed; The predicate, meanwhile, is the fragment of the sentence that is responsible for describing the action carried out by the subject or what is expressed about the subject.
The grammatical relationship that exists between these two essential components of our language transcends the limits of technique and structure to reach semantics . In our communication there are nuances that lead us to understand what we are saying, if it refers to a thing or an individual, if it is an opinion, a fact or a question, among many other possibilities. The subject and the predicate are two nodes that keep our speech in balance, even when one of them is omitted.
Verbal and nominal predicate
According to its characteristics, the predicate can be classified as a verbal predicate or nominal predicate . In the case of the verbal predicate , it is one that is composed of a non-copulative verb , which can appear alone or together with complements.
The copulative verbs are the following three: ser, estar and estar . They do not serve to provide data about an action carried out by the subject, but rather act as a link or copula . In other words, its purpose is to express certain qualities of the subject. Of course, as with the rest of the verbs in our language, they must agree in number with this one: he is / they are . With the adjective or noun that follows it, it must also agree in gender: they are businesswomen .
The most common of the three is the verb to be , since it allows us to communicate our formal or informal opinion about our environment. It should be noted that the third, seem , appears in some sources as a pseudocopulative verb, because in itself it has a certain semantic load: while the other two give way directly to an adjective, this one tells us about a greater observation, about something that It is detached from the subject (his physical appearance, his supposed state of mind, etc.) to lead us to talk about him.
Returning to the notion of verbal predicate, as we said above, it consists of a non-copulative verb. The set of words whose nucleus is said verb is called a verbal phrase .
Practical examples
Let's look at a case. In the sentence "Juan plays football" , the subject is "Juan" , while the predicate is "plays football" . Since the verb is "play" (not copulative), we are dealing with a verbal predicate.
Another example: "he received a call"
To test this example we can contrast it with one in which the predicate is nominal : "Juan is a soccer player." If we split hairs, in both cases we are saying the same thing; In fact, if our interlocutor did not hear us well and asked us to repeat ourselves, we could perfectly exchange them and the message they would receive would be the same. However, even in this relatively ambiguous case we can differentiate between the action play of the verbal predicate and the link between subject and profession that the nominal predicate establishes with the verb be .
Other examples : "Rafael Nadal won the US Open" (verbal predicate: "he won the US Open" ), "My girlfriend and I will have dinner at a Mexican restaurant" (verbal predicate: "we will have dinner at a Mexican restaurant" ) , "My brother is talking on the phone" (verbal predicate: "he is talking on the phone" ).