The compound predicate

The compound predicate consists of two parts: the notional and the structural. The structural part comes first and is followed by the notional part.

The notional part may be expressed by a noun, an adjective, a stative, an adverb, a verbal, a phrase, a predicative complex, or a clause.

The structural part is expressed by a finite verb - a phasal verb, a modal verb, a verb expressing attitude, intention, planning, etc., or a link verb.

From the point of view of meaning the most important part of the compound predicate is the notional part as it contains the information about the person or non-person expressed by the subject.

From the point of view of structure the most important part of the predicate is the first one, since it is expressed by a finite verb and carries grammatical information about the person, number, tense, voice, modal, attitudinal and aspective (phasal) meaning of the whole predicate.

The most important type of agreement (concord) in English is that of the subject and the predicate in number and person. Thus a singular noun-subject requires a singular verb-predicate, a plural noun-subject requires a plural verb-predicate.

The object

The object is a secondary part of the sentence referring to some other part of the sentence and expressed by a verb, an adjective, a stative or, very seldom, an adverb completing, specifying, or restricting its meaning.

From the point of view of their value and grammatical peculiarities, four types of objects can be distinguished in English:

the direct object - is a non-prepositional one that follows transitive verbs, adjectives, or statives and completes their meaning.

the indirect object - also follows verbs, adjectives and statives. Unlike the direct object, however, it may be attached to intransitive verbs as well as to transitive ones.

the cognate object - is a non-prepositional object which is attached to otherwise intransitive verbs and is always expressed by nouns derived from, or semantically related to, the root of the governing verb.

The retained object. This term is to be applied in case an active construction is transformed into a passive one and the indirect object of the active construction becomes the subject of the passive construction. The second object, the direct one, may be retained in the transformation, though the action of the predicate-verb is no more directed upon it.

The attribute

The attribute is a secondary part of the sentence which characterizes person or non-person expressed by the headword either qualitatively, quantitatively, or from the point of view of situation. Attributes may refer to nouns and other words of nominal nature, such as pronouns gerunds and substitute words. An attribute may be expressed by different parts of speech: By (a) adjectives or (b) adjectival phrases, By pronouns or pronominal phrases, By numerals, ordinal or cardinal, By (a) nouns in the common case singular or (b) prepositional nominal phrases, By nouns or pronouns in the genitive case.