Linking verb and renaming and nouns

Question

I was looking at linking verb definition and found that linking verb renames subject. I'm not too sure about renaming part. Does it mean that subject has a nick name which is represented as predicate?Does it mean that subject was never given 2n'd name?

For example, The captain of the team is Chris. I'm very confused with the noun and equal sign which is between the captain and chris. Is it true that we can call chris or captain when refering to the person? can we simply use "Chris, captain" as in the case of appositive phrase?

I'm also very confused with the defination of noun, especially name of THINGS. The definition is name of person place or thing. What do they mean by things? I can easily picture person and place, but things???

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

Hello, k24 - and welcome to English Forums.

1-- 'Rename' is rather metaphorical. What the predicate of a linking-verb sentence does is add information describing or defining the subject. It has nothing to do with a 'name' that you can really call the subject:

The captain is Chris.
The captain is tall.

Both 'Chris' and 'tall' complement 'captain' in that they supply added information which also describes or defines the same person.

2-- A thing is any object that is not a person or place, including abstracts.

Here are some person nouns: Chris, the mailman, ***, Santa Claus, the lady next door, he.
Here are some place nouns: Chicago, Mexico, Lake Michigan, Middle Earth.
Here are some thing nouns: mail, door, city, lake, beauty, hammer, sun, unhappiness.

Linking verb and renaming and nouns

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