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The term predicate is used in two ways in linguistics and its subfields. The first defines a predicate as everything in a standard declarative sentence except the subject, and the other defines it as only the main content verb or associated predicative expression of a clause.
Syllogistic reasoning consists of a series of subjects (S) and predicates (p). Premise 1: All humans (S) are mortal (p). Premise 2: Socrates (S) is a human (p). Conclusion: Therefore, Socrates (S) is mortal (p). Following these philosophers, the analysis of the sentence into a subject-predicate structure became the cornerstone of classical grammar.
A predicative expression (or just predicative) is part of a clause predicate, and is an expression that typically follows a copula or linking verb, e.g. be, seem, appear, or that appears as a second complement of a certain type of verb, e.g. call, make, name, etc. [1] The most frequently acknowledged types of predicative expressions are predicative adjectives (also predicate adjectives) and ...
In the most typical cases, the predicand corresponds to the subject of a clause, and the predicate corresponds to a verb phrase (VP) that is the head of the clause. But there are also form-meaning mismatches, where the predicand is not a subject or where the predicate is not the head of the clause. Also, not every utterance has a predicand.
A major sentence is a regular sentence; it has a subject and a predicate, e.g. "I have a ball." In this sentence, one can change the persons, e.g. "We have a ball." However, a minor sentence is an irregular type of sentence that does not contain a main clause, e.g. "Mary!", "Precisely so.", "Next Tuesday evening after it gets dark."
A predicate symbol (or relation symbol) with some valence (or arity, number of arguments) greater than or equal to 0. These are often denoted by uppercase letters such as P, Q and R. Examples: In P(x), P is a predicate symbol of valence 1. One possible interpretation is "x is a man".
The b-sentences above do not contain violations of the c-selectional restrictions of the predicates is wilting and drank; they are, rather, well-formed from a syntactic point of view (hence #, not *), for the arguments the building and a car satisfy the c-selectional restrictions of their respective predicates, these restrictions requiring ...
In most formalisms that use syntactic predicates, the syntax of the predicate is noncommutative, which is to say that the operation of predication is ordered. For instance, using the above example, consider the following pseudo-grammar, where X ::= Y PRED Z is understood to mean: "Y produces X if and only if Y also satisfies predicate Z":