As can be seen from the term itself the compound predicate consists of two parts: (a) a finite verb and (b) some other part of speech: a noun, a pronoun, an adjective, a verbal (a participle, a gerund, an infinitive), etc. The second component is the significant part of the predicate.

The first part expresses the verbal categories of person, number, tense, aspect, mood and voice; besides it has a certain lexical meaning of its own. The compound predicate may be nominal or verbal.