who is doing the action in the sentence?
In advance, hope this isn't too confusing...Thank you
los cinco deberes del Zen que predica el monstruo de ese templo son como un sable de madera: impiden que la gente viva ¡pero sin matarla!
Meaning: The 5 zen commandments that the monster of that temple predicted are like a wooden sabre: they prevent the people from living but without killing them!
My first interpretation of this sentence was **The 5 commandments predict the monster of that temple is like a woden sabre. (ignorance I know)
My question is:
How do you know that it is That the monster of that temple preach And not
that preach that the monster of that temple etc.
The person preaching or making the action comes after the verb in spanish and so how are you supposed to know how to interpret the sentence? Is there somekind of rule...
And I know I read "son" as "is" and "predica" as predict but I was just confused 
1 Answer
It helps to remove extra stuff. Like "del Zen"...we can get rid of that. Cinco is also extra. In fact, the whole clause that starts with que is extra info. That leaves...
Los deberes son como...
Now, the clause that starts with que provides extra information about the commandments. First of all, commandments rarely predict or preach. Second of all, if deberes were the subject of predicar, it would have been....
Los deberes que predican son como...
Since it's predica, we know the subject must be singular (los deberes is plural).
Also, it might help to see the Spanish version of what you thought it was originally...
The 5 commandments predict the monster of that temple is like a woden sabre...
Los cinco deberes predican que el monstruo de ese templo es como un sable de madera...
See the difference?
It is common (not required, but common) to put the subject after the verb in QUE clauses.
Los cinco deberes que el monstruo predica...
Los cinco deberes que predica el monstruo...
The two sentences above are equivalent. Spanish has fairly free word order while English is fairly rigid in its subject-verb-object construction.
