Languages & Linguistics
Predicates
In linguistics, predicates are the part of a sentence that provides information about the subject. They typically include a verb and any accompanying objects, complements, or modifiers. Predicates are essential for conveying the action or state of the subject and are a fundamental component of sentence structure.
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9 Key excerpts on "Predicates"
eBook - PDF- Marcel den Dikken(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Predication as a syntactic licensing relation sat uncomfortably within earlier generative frameworks, for the reasons discussed above; the Minimalist abandonment of D-structure has opened the way for a better integration of the theory of predication into syntactic theory more generally, as the renewed interest in (still controversially) non-thematic subjects has demonstrated. Notes 1. Åfarli and Eide (2000) adopt from Bouchard (1995) the idea that seman- tics writ large divides into three subcomponents, only one of which, ‘Grammar Semantics,’ directly affects syntactic form; the requirement that propositions are structured into subject and predicate is hypothe- sized to be part of Grammar Semantics. 2. The notable exception to this generalization is when the property attributed is syntactically complex, with a gap in a predicate position (see Williams 1990 and Heycock and Kroch 1999 for some discussion of these cases): (i) a. wise is a good thing to be e b. wise is what I want to be e The syntax of predication 347 3. This is closely related to the argument made in Williams (1982:286), about the external argument of event nominalizations as opposed to the verbs from which they are derived. Williams makes the point that when a noun like desiccation is used predicatively, as in (i) (interpreted as I consider that to be desiccation), the subject of this predicate is not the thing undergoing desiccation, although that would be the subject of the corresponding verb: (i) I consider that dessication As Williams says, “[(i)] says that that is an act of dessication, not a thing undergoing dessication”. 4. But see remarks above for Williams’s very different view of the relation of expletives to predication. 5. Examples like (9d) also posed a problem for the idea that case had the function of making θ-roles ‘visible’ (Chomsky (1986b), since by hypoth- esis the expletive has no θ-role.
eBook - PDFSemantics
Advances in Theories and Mathematical Models
- Muhammad Tanvir Afzal(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- IntechOpen(Publisher)
In other words: Predicates are not prefab, they are just semi-processed products. They need to be determined within the sentences they belong to, and further assigned to the utterances they are constituents of. Now that this primacy of predication upon Predicates (so to speak) has been grasped, let us move on to the two main models about Predicates, that of Aristotle and that of Frege 17 . Before sketching an essential outline of their doctrines, it is worth noting the wide influence of models, especially the Aristotelian one, with which not only philosophers became (and still become) acquainted, but also ordinary people, usually young pupils during their first years of school. 3.3 Predicates and their correlates, or the sentence as a unit Predication is the act of predicating (saying) something about something else. So we have, in nuce , the legitimate expectancy of a second term of relation, of the predicative relation: what is predicated about. 15 On this very point, of the border between generality and individuality, ten years later Mathesius stated: “The sentence is not entirely the product of a transitory moment, is not entirely determined by the individual situation, and, consequently, does not entirely belong to the sphere of speech, but depends in its general form on the grammatical system of the language in which it is uttered. […] In language we have the word in its conceptual meaning and the sentence as abstract pattern, whereas in speech we have the word as referring to concrete reality and the sentence as concrete utterance.” (Mathesius 1936). See (Raynaud, 2008). 16 See (Frigerio, 2010 a), (Frigerio, 2010 b). 17 The eminency of Aristotle’s and Frege’s contributions throughout the whole history of logic are widely recognised: see (Dummett, 1973).
eBook - PDF- Simon C. Dik(Author)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
78 The nuclear predication 4.1. The nuclear predication The fundamental structure of the nuclear predication is determined by the combinatorial possibilities (the valency) of the predicate, as defined in the predicate frame. We saw that Predicates can be basic or derived. In the former case they are contained in the lexicon, in the latter they are produced through predicate formation rules (see TFG2: chapter 1). Here, we mainly restrict our attention to basic Predicates. All Predicates are lexical items of the language. In principle FG does not recognize abstract Predicates (cf. section 1.7.3.). This means that Predicates are forms which can occur in actual linguistic expressions of the language. When a predicate is basic, this means that the speaker must learn and know it as such in order to be able to use it correctly. It does not mean that the predicate has no internal semantic structure. Indeed, the meaning of most basic Predicates is such that it can at least in part be analysed in terms of combinations of the meanings of semantically simpler Predicates. Thus, the English Predicates die, kill, and murder are basic Predicates, since there is no rule of English by means of which they could be formed; they therefore belong to the lexicon of English. Their meanings, however, are structured in the sense that they can be analysed in terms of more elementary Predicates. In order to account for the semantic properties of Predicates and the semantic relations that hold between them, each predicate frame in the lexicon is provided with a number of meaning postulates. Meaning postulates specify what (combinations of) Predicates are entailed by a given predicate frame; in certain cases the meaning postulates associated with a predicate frame add up to a full specification of its meaning, which can be read both ways. In that case the combined meaning postulates provide a meaning definition for the predicate in question.
eBook - PDFLanguage and Logics
An Introduction to the Logical Foundations of Language
- Howard Gregory(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Edinburgh University Press(Publisher)
33 chapter 3 Predicates The previous chapter looked at the combination of basic sentences into larger sen-tences. This chapter will concentrate on the internal structure of basic sentences, and the meaningful elements within them. Since the most important of these meaningful elements are Predicates, this approach is known as predicate logic. As usual we will first discuss the ideas of predicate logic relatively informally. We will then give more formal definitions of its syntax and semantics, and show how it can be used as a translation language. Do we really need to analyse the internal structure of basic sentences, or would it be enough to treat them as unanalysable building blocks or ‘atoms’ as in the previ-ous chapter? Here are two considerations which seem to show that analysis of their internal structure is necessary. First, consider what the alternative would mean. If sentences are unanalysable, they and their meanings (truth conditions) would have to be stored in our heads as a very long list. But the number of sentences (even basic sentences) is infinite, and our brains cannot store infinite lists. Moreover, we continually encounter or create new sentences, whose meanings we cannot have learnt, but which cause us no problems. It seems that this infinity of sentence meanings can be computed by rearranging smaller building blocks. The meaning of the sentence depends on the building blocks and the way they are put together. This is known as the principle of compositionality , normally attributed to Frege. Second, if sentence meanings were atomic, there should in principle be no relation in meaning between different basic sentences. But, in fact, different sentences are often related in meaning, and we may want to describe that relationship. For example, ‘John loves Mary’ does not mean the same as ‘Mary loves John’: the truth of one is not dependent on the truth of the other.
eBook - PDF- Witold Doroszewski, Iain Taylor(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
With the study of the cognitive function of language there is naturally connected work on its improve-ment, that is to say, on the intellectual culture of society, which finds expression in the capacity to use words and to act in a controlled and purposeful way. Linguistics is not only a social-historical science, but also a social-pedagogic one. Understanding the matter thus we are equally far from the 19th-century conception of linguistics as a science which was supposed to serve the cause of reconstructing the proto-Indo-European language and from the currently thriving conceptions of language as a closed system of pure values, to be studied in their mutual correlations in isolation from their connections with the substructure of the first system of signals. Thinking (c/. above, p. 119) is the discovering of relations between the elements of reality; the manner of formulating these rela-tions finds expression in ways of predicating about them, and predica-tion in turn is a combination of the subject with a predicative word or expression with the help of the form is or with a verbal predicate. Having discussed the functions of the form is, let us consider the simplest types of predicating about a subject with the help of a predicate. In the sentence the horse rims the dependence of the form of the predicate on the subject finds expression in the fact that the predicate has the form of the third person singular. No extralinguistic elements have any connection with this dependence, nor do they exert any influ-ence on the relation of the grammatical predicate to the grammatical subject. In making this assertion we remain within the limits of the second system of signals, i.e. we formulate in our minds the sentence the horse runs, and we make in turn this judgement which we have formulated into an object of our thought and assert that it is constructed on the same pattern as we might construct other judgements on, such
eBook - PDF- D. Zaefferer(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
3. Results Let us summarize the results of our considerations. We began with the attempt to redefine the concept of predication as a sentence-constituting device serving to unite elements of a proposition in order to make it utterable. We saw that the bipartite Aristotelian type of predication is only one of at least three possible types of sentence-constitution. Moreover, there is a second parameter involved, that of actant-binding, which cross-cuts the parameter of sentence-constitution and results in a rich array of different combinations languages may employ in constructing their respective networks of grammatical relations. The consequence is that the idea of the subject-predicate structure as a linguistic universal must be abandoned. Instead, each individual language should be more closely examined with regard to the combinations of sentence-constituting and actant-binding devices it employs, since the functional coherence of the simple sentence seems to be based precisely on these two parameters. In the course of our discussion we have seen that these two principles do not function independently of each other, but that there are certain correlations between the localization of the sentence-constituting mechanism and the 92 HANS-JÜRGEN SASSE method of actant-binding. Moreover, we have seen that there is a third correlate involved, namely the basic lexical semantic characteristics of the main constituent parts of sentences, and in particular those of the state of affairs expressions: whether or not they are actant-oriented (participial), whether or not there is a clear distinction between nouns and verbs, and so on. The following table illustrates some of the findings: LOCALIZATION OF THE SENTENCE-CONSTITU-TING OPERATION TYPE OF STATE OF AFFAIRS EXPRESSION CHARACTERISTIC ACTANT RELATION Examples outside the S-A complex rrvpe n 'action-noun-like' combination of possessive, adiunctive.
- Ricardo Mairal Usón, María Jesús Pérez Quintero, Ricardo Mairal Usón, María Jesús Pérez Quintero(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
The predicate in Functional Grammar 11 although the two matters are partially interlinked. Even greater com-plications may be foreseen for the analysis of Athabaskan languages, in which each verbal predicate has an imperfective, a perfective and a future/progressive form, and where [e] specially for verbs of position ... motion ... or handling, different verb stems are chosen according to the shape, texture, and number of objects involved (Mithun 1999: 363-364). The purpose of providing all this morphophonological information with each predicate is to reduce the work done by the expression rules to automatic and fully regular formal processes; after all, the underlying representation is designed to contain all the information that the expression rules need to do their work. An alternative archi-tecture is thinkable, in which the expression rules respond not only to the underlying representation, but also, in parallel, consult the Fund for morphophonological information. This would not only be more efficient, but may be psychologically more adequate, reflecting paral-lel rather than linear production of morphophonological and seman-tico-syntactic expression. 3.2. The category of the predicate The predicate frame, secondly, will contain a statement of the cate-gory, the part of speech (Hengeveld 1992), to which the predicate belongs. This is conventionally indicated in square brackets immedi-ately after the predicate in question. The emic distinctions to be made here are those that are relevant for the operation of the expression rules of the language in question. Hengeveld (1992) has shown that languages draw differently from the etic categories {Verb, Noun, Adjective, Adverb} such that a language that has a particular cate-gory will also have the categories listed to the left: thus no language will have Adjective that lacks Noun.
- Casper de Groot(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Chapter 2 PREDICATE STRUCTURE 2.0. INTRODUCTION In chapter 1 we summarized the standard view on predication in FG in the following way. Predications consist of Predicates and terms. Terms refer to entities in some world, and Predicates designate properties of, or relations between such entities. Predicates are contained in predicate-frames, i.e. structures which specify their fundamental semantic and syntactic properties such as (i) the syntactic category of the predicate (Verbal, Nominal, Adjectival), (ii) the number of arguments, (iii) the semantic functions of the arguments (Agent, Goal, Recipient, etc.), and (iv) the selection restrictions on the terms which are to fill the argument slots. The predicate-frame of Hungarian javit 'repair' has the following general form: (1) javit v (xj : < human > (x,))^ (x 2 : < inanimate > (x 2 )) Go 'repair' Nuclear Predicates can be extended with satellites (non-arguments). Consider predicate-frame javit 'repair' as given in (1), when extended with a satellite of Location: (2) [javitv (x x : < human > (Xj))^ (x 2 : < inanimate > (x 2 )) Go ] (y,)^ 'repair' Predicate-frames such as (1) are given in the lexicon. The lexicon is considered to be the list of all basic Predicates of a language. If one wishes to construct the lexicon of a language, it is necessary to answer the following two major questions: (3) a. What is the predicate-frame of each predicate? b. Which Predicates are basic Predicates, and which Predicates can be derived by productive rules? 32 Discussions on Predicates and predicate-frames within the framework of FG have shown that it is not always easy to decide (i) whether a predicate is basic or derived, or (ii) what predicate-frame a predicate has. 1 Sometimes there are questions as to (i) the number of arguments a predicate has, (ii) the categorial status of the predicate, or (iii) the possibility of Predicates having more than one predicate-frame.
eBook - PDF- Matthew P. Anstey, J. Lachlan Mackenzie, Matthew P. Anstey, J. Lachlan Mackenzie(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
In the case of verbal Predicates these are the familiar predicate operators Perfective/lmperfective, Aspect and Negation. In the case of adjectival Predicates, one may think of operators specifying the adjective for comparative or superlative; in the case of nominal Predicates, of operators specifying the predicate as proper, count, mass or collective. In addition, all Predicates can be specified by the anaphoric operator, indicating that the predicate in question is coreferential with a predicate previously referred to. 2.2. The layered structure of the clause Before we move on to discuss some of the implications of the analysis proposed, let us first have a closer look at the schema given under (1) above. According to this schema terms are on a par with the other four structural units in that they are used to refer to a particular type of entity (in this case, first order entities). However, as will have become clear from the preceding, terms can be used to refer to any type of entity, i.e. not only to individuals, but also to speech acts, potential facts and SoAs. One may therefore prefer Hengeveld's schema (2) on p. 109 above, which has the advantage that it does not mention terms as a particular structural unit used to refer to a particular order of entity. It merely indicates that first order entities can only be referred to by means of terms (with variable x); it does not state that terms necessarily refer to first order entities. Thus schema (2) implicitly acknowledges that terms do not belong to the same stratum of the utterance structure as clauses, propositions, predications and Predicates: terms can refer to any type of entity; clauses, propositions, predications and Predicates, on the other hand, function as restrictors of expressions referring to a particular type of entity. Predicates as referring expressions 115 But even if we accept schema (2), we are still faced with a problem.
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