It is rather difficult to explain what a predicate is, since this term is used in the most opposite areas of knowledge - from mathematics to logic and linguistics. This word comes from the Latin praedicatum and translates as "spoken", that is, it means that the subject is being spoken about at the moment - it does not matter with a denial or affirmation. The predicate is very widely used as a term in linguistics, especially in the terminological systems of Western Europe. In Russian, it is also known what a predicate is, only in our country this term is replaced by a "predicate", although this is not quite the same thing.
The concept
Not all information about the subject can be indicated by this term. To understand what a predicate is, you can first figure out what the semantic requirements are for it. If the attribute of an object is indicated, as well as its condition, together with its relation to other objects, then this term can be used. The very emphasis on existence or being in the usual meaning of this word will not answer the question of what a predicate is, since there is no judgment in it. For example: unicorns do not exist ; it's a cherry ; Almonds are not nuts . There is no predicate in all of these references to objects.
Modern directions of logic often replace the concept of a predicate with another, called a propositional function, where the main arguments are the actants - the object and the subject. The terminological confusion in grammatical and logical categories could not be avoided, however, in linguistic terms, the term we are considering is always used. For example, predicate terms of the predicate type are associated in the formal aspect of a given sentence member. They can be nominal, verb, and so on. While the definition of a predicate is expressed in its substantial aspect.
Predicate types
Among the semantic types distinguish taxonomic, relational, evaluative, characterizing. Taxonomic indicate the class of the subject. For example: favorite shoes are bast shoes; grown tree - cedar; new movie - fantasy . A relational predicate is the value of an indication of how one object relates to another. For example: a bast goes on bast shoes; cedar - from the pine family; Fantasy is a genre of fiction . Characterizing predicates indicate whether the object is static or dynamic, transient, or permanent. For example: bast shoes are worn out; cedar grows; fantasy carries away .
Particular attention should be paid to a type called an estimated predicate. For example: bast shoes - eco-friendly shoes; cedars are very beautiful; Fantasy immerses the viewer in a fairy tale . There are predicate words related to the type of spatial and temporal localization. For example: bast shoes in a box; cedar cones will be in September; I read fantasy at home . It must be remembered that it is not so simple to determine the type of predicate precisely because different types of them are represented most often syncretically in a language. That is, with one verb not only one relation of objects to each other can be expressed, but also characteristics and localization.
Other classification
You can classify these words on other grounds. The type of subject plays a decisive role: the lower order predicates relate to material entities, and the higher - characterize various types of intangible objects. Two types are sharply contrasted here: those related to the event and characterizing the proposition, the invariant. For example: bast shoes were torn only yesterday - bast shoes were torn, but yesterday - it is very doubtful .
Further, according to this classification, it is necessary to divide predicates by the number of actants. Single: bast shoes are light; cedar - powerful ; double: l apti are light on legs; cedar covered the sun ; triple: bast shoes are light on legs when walking; the cedar closed the sun for undergrowth . In another way, you can divide predicates into first-order (non-derivative - cedar stands ); second order (derived from the first - cedar resistant ); third order (derivatives of the second) and so on.
Definition
In logic and linguistics, a predicate is a predicate of judgment, that is, what is expressed with a negation or statement about the subject. Such words indicate the absence or presence in the subject of a particular attribute. From the point of view of linguistics, it speaks of semantic and syntactic predicates. The latter is an element of the surface of the structure, that is, the predicate, and the first is the core of the semantic configuration, reflecting the situation outside the language, that is, its nuclear semantic.
In the same way, a semantic predicate is represented in a variety of ways and at the surface level of a structure. There is no one-to-one correspondence between these two types of predicates, since any of them can reflect the same situation. For example: I put bast shoes in a corner; I put the bast shoes in a corner; placed in the corner of the bast shoes . The traditionally unsolved problem of linguistics refers to the definition of a predicate. A positive answer would be essential for the development of the concept - semantic or syntactic, but the predicate has not yet received an unambiguous definition.
Of the concept
In terminology, the concept of "predicate" is not basic, and therefore it is necessary to determine it, referring to the configuration of the syntactic representation. The predicate component is usually one that has a verb group. Speaking informally, everything related to a verb of a personal form and constituting a single syntactic group with it is the predicate component.
In particular, its composition also includes auxiliary elements (component of the auxiliary verb). The predicate, together with the subject, completely exhausts its syntactic structure in the sentence. And then each of these components can be split into simpler ones. In this concept, levels are distinguished - superficial and initial, then the presence of complications will be minimized.
Structure
So, the structure of the predicate can be superficial and original. However, the composition of the syntactic groups does not reflect either the word order or the voice - passive or active. For example: oak has been growing for a thousand years; oak has been growing for a thousand years; oak has been growing for a thousand years . All these sentences have identical predicate components in their original structure.
However, the original structures with all their proximity are not always associated with surface structures of semantic equivalence. The predicate logic can not always be reduced to a single interpretation, even if the components are correlated by collateral. For example:
- New trees are grown in the old garden.
- New trees were grown in the old garden .
Isn’t it that, upon closer examination, the meaning is somewhat different?
Semantic interpretation
Further development of this model leads to narrowing the gap between the surface and initial representations in the sentence. With different initial structures, both active and passive variants will be interpreted differently, although equivalent pairs are semantically possible. The grammar is arranged in such a way that all syntactic structures are set separately for these types of sentences, and the transformation does not affect the final result when a passive version with a surface sentence structure is obtained.
It just happens that syntactic representations are translated into semantic representations with the help of grammar rules, establishing the proximity or even equivalence of the corresponding surface structures. Moreover, the same sentence may have a semantic interpretation of several types of predicate at once.
Predicate logic
A predicate is a statement in which arguments are added. If one argument is substituted, the predicate will express its property; if it is more, then it will draw the relationship between all the arguments. For example: oak - a tree; spruce - tree . Here the property is expressed - to be a tree. This predicate is therefore represented by both oak and spruce. Next example: Bast shoes are woven from a bast . The predicate here will be the word "bast shoes", and the remaining words will be the arguments, since they relate to it and by themselves do not have sufficient independence. Woven - bast shoes. From bast - bast shoes.
The logic of utterance has a too narrowly defined language and therefore is not suitable for human reasoning, therefore, people use the language of predicate logic, that is, reasoning. As an example, let’s give a reasoning that cannot be expressed by the logic of the statement: All people are mortal. I am human. I am also mortal . In the language of propositional logic, it is necessary to write this down in three separate fragments without any connection with each other. And the language of predicates immediately identifies two main ones: "to be mortal" and "to be human." Then the first sentence is most closely associated with them.
Components
The semantic structure of sentences has their own categories. These are predicates that convey a state or a specific action, actants - subjects of action or objects of various kinds (direct, indirect, effective and so on), sirconstants - various circumstances as a field of action.
For example: At night a tree was knocking on a window with branches . The detail here can be said to be maximum. The predicate of action is the word "pounded." Next are the actants: the subject is “a tree”, the object is “out the window”, the instrumentative is “branches”. The sirconstant (or temperament, or circumstance of time) is the word "at night." But a second, local, “from the street,” for example, may appear.
Components
Predicates are composed according to the semantic principle in this way: predicates themselves (for example, states) and actants (participants in an event). Semantically, actants also have a division into types:
- A subject (otherwise - an agent) is a subject type of actant or active actor. For example: a tree is growing .
- An object is an addressee of direct or indirect action, whether or not directly affected. For example: a cat catches a mouse .
- An instinctive is an object without which a situation cannot be realized. For example: ate soup .
- Result - designation of the result of committed actions. For example: grass grew in spring .
In addition, sirconstants cannot be dispensed with - the circumstances of the action. They are also divided into groups. The two most frequent and main ones are temp-book and locative. For example: it becomes warm in spring . The word "spring" is temperament. Lilac blooms everywhere . The word "everywhere" is a locative.
Output
In order to learn how to accurately establish the subject and predicate in the judgment, and this is extremely important both for one’s own eloquence and for the most accurate understanding of someone else’s thought, one needs to clearly understand what is the subject of this statement and what speaks of its qualities.