what is subject and simple predicate in the sentence "Most girls love to dress-up"?

Question

I had a debut with colleague to identify simple predicate in above sentence. He is strong about "love" and I was hold on "to dress-up". Which one is right since "to love" and "to dress-up" both can be used as verb.

Is any specific rule or hierarchy available to identify simple predicate such as physical actions would precede over non-physical actions? Or will positional occurrence in sentence be deciding factor?

Answer 1

I'm afraid your colleague wins your *debate.*

The difference has nothing to do with the actual meaning of the verbs. The simplest way I know of to describe the predicate verb is that it's the one that's actually happening in the sentence. In this sentence, is loving happening, or dressing up? It's the loving.

The verb form that starts with "to" in English is the infinitive, which is never the predicate verb. It's the form of the verb with no subject, so by definition, no one is doing it.

Answer 2

First, it should be pointed out that "dress up" is not hyphenated. The correct punctuation for this sentence is: "Most girls love to dress up."

Now, as for subject and predicate. The subject is the main noun of the sentence plus all of the words, phrases, and clauses that "modify" (i.e., "describe) it. In our sentence about girls, the main noun is "girls," and it is modified by the adjective (an existential quantifier) "most." So the subject of the sentence is "Most girls."

The predicate is the main verb plus all of the words, phrases, and clauses that modify it. The main verb in our sentence is "love," and it is modified by the infinitive phrase "to dress up." So the predicate of the sentence is "love to dress up."

Unfortunately, I am not familiar with the term "simple predicate," but my educated guess is that it is probably a different way of saying "main verb." If this is true, then the simple predicate of the sentence is the main verb "love," and your friend is right.

I hope this helps!