Prédicatives

Prédicatives, in linguistics, refers to the grammatical function of certain words or phrases that complete the meaning of a verb and describe the subject or object of that verb. These are often called predicative complements. The most common type of predicative is the subject predicative, which follows a linking verb such as "to be," "to seem," or "to become," and renames or describes the subject. For example, in the sentence "She is a doctor," the phrase "a doctor" is a subject predicative, identifying what "she" is. Similarly, in "He seems tired," "tired" is an adjective functioning as a subject predicative, describing "he." Object predicatives, on the other hand, follow a direct object and describe or rename it. An example is "They elected him president," where "president" is an object predicative, describing "him." These predicatives can be nouns, pronouns, adjectives, or even certain prepositional phrases. Understanding prédicatives is crucial for analyzing sentence structure and the relationship between different parts of a sentence.