The compound nominal predicate.

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§11. The compound predicate.

As can be seen from the term itself the compound predicate con­sists of two parts: (a) a finite verb and (b) some other part of speech: a noun, a pronoun, an adjective, a verbal (a participle, a gerund, an infinitive), etc. The second component is the significant part of the predicate.

The first part expresses the verbal categories of person, number, tense, aspect, mood and voice; besides it has a certain lexical meaning of its own. The compound predicate may be nominal or verbal.

The compound nominal predicate denotes the state or quality of the person or thing expressed by the subject (e. g. He is tired, The book is interesting), or the class of persons or things to which this person or thing belongs (e. g. She is a student).

The compound nominal predicate consists of a link verb and a predicative (the latter is also called the nominal part of the predicate).

The link verb (or a verb of incomplete predication) expresses the verbal categories of person, number, tense, aspect, mood, sometimes ^voice. All link verbs, as the result of a long development, have partly lost their original concrete meaning. One link verb has lost its con­crete meaning altogether: this is the verb to be, which can be called  a pure link verb as it performs only a grammatical function and can be linked with a predicative expressed by any part of speech used in this function.

This is a picture of London.¹

¹ In Russian the link verb быть is generally not used in the Present tense: Его сестра учительница.

Most link verbs to some extent preserve their meaning. The following are the most common of these link verbs: to appear; to get, to grow to continue, to feel, to keep, to look, to turn, to hold, to prove, to turn out to loom, to rank, to remain, to run, to seem, to smell, to taste, to fall_,  to stand, to go, to work.

His wife sighed and remained silent. (London)

Harris grew more cheerful. (Jerome)

At my age I get nervous. (Galsworthy)

He soon fell fast asleep in my arms, sobbing at longer intervals.(Dickens)

The boat seemed stuffy. (Jerome)

She, for her part, felt recessive and thence evasive. (Dreiser)

Many of these verbs can be used both as verbs of complete predica­tion fully preserving their concrete meaning and as link verbs.

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