Predicate (grammar)

In traditional grammar, a predicate is one of the two main parts of a sentence (the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies). For the simple sentence 'John ', John acts as the subject, and is yellow acts as the predicate, a subsequent description of the subject headed with a verb. In traditional grammar, a predicate is one of the two main parts of a sentence (the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies). For the simple sentence 'John ', John acts as the subject, and is yellow acts as the predicate, a subsequent description of the subject headed with a verb. In current linguistic semantics, a predicate is an expression that can be true of something. Thus, the expressions 'is yellow' or 'is like broccoli' are true of those things that are yellow or like broccoli, respectively. This notion is closely related to the notion of a predicate in formal logic, which includes more expressions than the former one, for example, nouns and some kinds of adjectives. The predicate in traditional grammar is inspired by propositional logic of antiquity (as opposed to the more modern predicate logic). A predicate is seen as a property that a subject has or is characterized by. A predicate is therefore an expression that can be true of something. Thus, the expression 'is moving' is true of anything that is moving. This classical understanding of predicates was adopted more or less directly into Latin and Greek grammars; and from there, it made its way into English grammars, where it is applied directly to the analysis of sentence structure. It is also the understanding of predicates as defined in English-language dictionaries. The predicate is one of the two main parts of a sentence (the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies). The predicate must contain a verb, and the verb requires or permits other elements to complete the predicate, or it precludes them from doing so. These elements are objects (direct, indirect, prepositional), predicatives, and adjuncts: The predicate provides information about the subject, such as what the subject is, what the subject is doing, or what the subject is like. The relation between a subject and its predicate is sometimes called a nexus. A predicative nominal is a noun phrase, such as in a sentence 'George III is the king of England', the phrase 'the king of England' being the predicative nominal. The subject and predicative nominal must be connected by a linking verb, also called a copula. A predicative adjective is an adjective, such as in Ivano is attractive, attractive being the predicative adjective. The subject and predicative adjective must also be connected by a copula. This traditional understanding of predicates has a concrete reflex in many phrase structure theories of syntax. These theories divide an English declarative sentence (S) into a noun phrase (NP) and verb phrase (VP), e.g. The subject NP is shown in green, and the predicate VP in blue. This concept of sentence structure stands in stark contrast to dependency structure theories of grammar, which place the finite verb (= conjugated verb) as the root of all sentence structure and thus reject this binary NP-VP division, even for English. Languages with more flexible word order (often called nonconfigurational languages) are often treated differently also in phrase structure approaches. Most modern theories of syntax and grammar take their inspiration for the theory of predicates from predicate calculus as associated with Gottlob Frege. This understanding sees predicates as relations or functions over arguments. The predicate serves either to assign a property to a single argument or to relate two or more arguments to each other. Sentences consist of predicates and their arguments (and adjuncts) and are thus predicate-argument structures, whereby a given predicate is seen as linking its arguments into a greater structure. This understanding of predicates sometimes renders a predicate and its arguments in the following manner: Predicates are placed on the left outside of brackets, whereas the predicate's arguments are placed inside the brackets. One acknowledges the valency of predicates, whereby a given predicate can be avalent (not shown), monovalent (laughed in the first sentence), divalent (helped in the second sentence), or trivalent (gave in the third sentence). These types of representations are analogous to formal semantic analyses, where one is concerned with the proper account of scope facts of quantifiers and logical operators. Concerning basic sentence structure, however, these representations suggest above all that verbs are predicates, and the noun phrases that they appear with their arguments. On this understanding of the sentence, the binary division of the clause into a subject NP and a predicate VP is hardly possible. Instead, the verb is the predicate, and the noun phrases are its arguments. Other function words – e.g. auxiliary verbs, certain prepositions, phrasal particles, etc. – are viewed as part of the predicate. The matrix predicates are in bold in the following examples: