I've been reading around sentence structure in German and I was hoping that someone could clarify something for me.
From what I've read and understood, the following apply:
- In English, the predicate is everything except for the subject. For example, in the sentence "The man drinks the hot coffee", the predicate is "drinks the hot coffee".
- In German, the predicate is the verb (forming the Verbklammer). For example, in the sentence "Der Mann trinkt den heißen Kaffee", the predicate is "trinkt".
Is this a correct understanding? If it is, does that mean that there isn't one universal definition of the predicate across different languages?
Thanks!