gramchk8

Faulty Predication: Every sentence has a subject and a predicate . Predication refers to the way in which the subject and the verb interact. There are four basic possibilities for this interaction.

subject predicate

[The boy] [climbed the tree.] Expresses an action that the subject does. Active voice.
[The tree] [was climbed by the boy.] Expresses an action that is done to the subject. Passive voice.
[The tree] [was tall and leafy.] Describes the subject. The sentence has a predicate adjective.
[The tree] [was an oak] Names a category to the subject belongs. The sentence has a predicate nominative.

Faulty predication occurs when the subject cannot be what the predicate expresses. "The tree was rough bark" suffers from faulty predication since "a tree can have rough bark" but it cannot be rough bark. This particular example is fairly obvious, but faulty predication can be harder to detect. Had I said, "'The tree was rough bark' is faulty predication" you might have thought my sentence logical. It isn't. "The tree was rough bark' is an example of faulty predication."

Sometimes ESL students write sentences with faulty predication because their vocabulary of verbs is not very large. They depend on a verb that they know, the verb to be, but the verb to be may not describe the relationship that they are trying to express.

There are two ways to fix faulty predication either 1) change the verb to one that correctly describes the relationship between the subject and predicate

            NOT   The tree was rough bark.
            BUT    The tree had rough bark.
            OR      The tree was covered with rough bark.

or 2) change either the subject or predicate so that they match

EITHER The tree that the boy climbed was a tall tree with rough bark. IT IS LOGICAL TO SAY THAT A IS A
TREE.

        OR            The tree that the boy climbed was a tall one with rough bark.    AGAIN THE TREE IS A TREE, ONLY
                                                                                                                            THE WORD TREE HAS BEEN
                                                                                                                            REPLACED BY A PRONOUN

Sometimes student writers will commit faulty predication because they are trying too hard to avoid the repetition that they actually need to build a good sentence. Faulty predication can also occur when the writer doesn't see that a phrase in the sentence is performing a to-be-like function. For instance (in a sentence taken from a student paper),

FAULTY VERSION Mailer describes the true code of manhood as being an individual that possesses endurance.
REVISED VERSION Mailer asserts that the true code of manhood requires an individual to possess endurance.

A "code" can't be an "individual" (the verb to be appears in this case as a participal) but the "code" can "require" something.

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