How to Know a Sentence

By eHow Education Editor

Instructions

Step 1:
Define the predicate as "what is being said about the subject." Everything that isn't the subject is the predicate.
Step 2:
Find the subject. This is the object or person that's being talked about. If you can't find the subject, ask yourself if it would make sense to add the word "you" as a subject. When the subject is "you," it may be omitted from the sentence. The "you" is understood. If someone says to you, "Take out the trash," you are the subject.
Step 3:
Find which word links the subject to what is being said about the subject. In every sentence, this word is the verb. In a sentence like "The dog barked at the flying squirrel that was chattering at him," the verb "barked" connects the subject "dog" to the object "the squirrel." The verb tells us how the dog and squirrel are related. Notice that there are two other words--"flying" and "chattering" that could be verbs in the sentence, but they don't connect the squirrel to the dog. "Flying" in this sentence acts as an adjective, a word to describe the squirrel.
Step 4:
Remember that the verb that connects the predicate to the subject won't always come directly after the subject. You also may have more than one predicate. Read this sentence: "The dog, who wanted to protect her puppies, frantically ran around the yard and barked at the flying squirrel." "Wanted" and "ran" are not the verbs you're looking for because they are in a phrase that describes the dog, but they don't link the dog to the squirrel. As with the sentence in Step 3, "barked" links the dog with the squirrel despite all the other words.
Step 5:
Note that the sequence of the words can change the subject-object relationship. In "The squirrel was barked at by the dog," the squirrel is the subject, even though the dog is doing the barking. This is called a passive sentence.

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