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 is translated as "said", that is, it means that the subject is being spoken about at the moment - it does not matter, with a denial or an 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.
Concept
Not any information about the subject can be designated by this term. To understand what a predicate is, you can first figure out what semantic requirements are imposed on it. If a sign of an object is indicated, as well as its state along with its relation to other objects, then this term can be used. The very emphasis on existence or being in the ordinary sense of the word will not answer the question of what is a predicate,because there is no judgment in it. For example: unicorns don't exist; it's a cherry; almond is not a nut. There is no predicate in all these references to objects.
Modern trends in logic often replace the notion of a predicate with another one called a propositional function, where the main arguments are the actants - the object and the subject. Terminological confusion in grammatical and logical categories could not be avoided, however, in linguistic use, 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 member of a sentence. They can be nominal, verbal, and so on. While the definition of a predicate is expressed in its content aspect.
Predicate types
Among the semantic types are taxonomic, relational, evaluative, characterizing. Taxonomics indicate the class of an item. For example: favorite shoes - bast shoes; grown tree - cedar; new fantasy cinema. A relational predicate is the meaning of specifying how one object relates to another. For example: bast goes on bast shoes; cedar - from the pine family; fantasy is a genre of science fiction. Characterizing predicates indicate the characteristics of an object, static or dynamic, transient or permanent. For example: bast shoes are worn out; cedar grows; fantasy captivates.
Special attention should be paid to the type called the evaluation predicate. For example: bast shoes - eco-friendly shoes; cedars are very beautiful; fantasy immerse the viewer in a fairy tale. There are also wordspredicates related to the type of spatial and temporal localization. For example: bast shoes in a box; pine cones will be in September; I read fantasy at home. It must be remembered that it is not so easy to determine the type of a predicate, precisely because in the language different types of them are most often represented syncretically. That is, one verb can express not only one relation of objects to each other, but at the same time both characteristics and localizations.
Other classification
You can classify these words on other grounds. The type of the subject plays a decisive role: the lower order predicates refer to material entities, and the higher order characterizes various types of non-material objects. Here, two types are sharply contrasted: 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 - very doubtful.
Further, according to this classification, it is necessary to divide the predicates by the number of actants. Single: bast shoes - light; cedar - powerful; double: l apti are light on the feet; the cedar covered the sun; triple: bast shoes are light on the feet when walking; the cedar blocked the sun for the undergrowth. In another way, predicates can be divided into first-order ones (non-derivatives - the cedar stands); second order (derived from the first - resistant cedar); third order (second derivatives) and so on.
Definition
In logic and linguistics, a predicate is a predicate of a judgment, that is, something that is expressed with negationor a statement about the subject. Such words show the absence or presence of a particular feature in an object. From the point of view of linguistics, we are talking about 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 that reflects the situation outside the language, that is, its core semantheme.
In the same way, a semantic predicate is represented in a variety of ways and at the surface level of the 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 my sandals in a corner; bast shoes placed in a corner. The traditionally unsolvable problem of linguistics refers to the definition of the concept 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.
Concepts
In the terminology, the term "predicate" is not a basic concept, and therefore it must be defined, referring to the configuration of the syntactic representation. The predicate component is usually one that has a verb group. Speaking informally, everything related to the verb of the personal form and constituting a single syntactic group with it is the predicate component.
In particular, it also includes auxiliary elements (a component of an auxiliary verb). The predicate, together with the subject, completely exhausts it in the sentence.syntactic structure. And then each of these components can be broken down into simpler ones. This concept distinguishes between levels - superficial and initial, then the presence of complications will be minimized.
Structure
So, the structure of the predicate can be superficial and initial. However, the composition of syntactic groups does not reflect either word order or voice - passive or active. For example: an oak grows for a thousand years; an oak has been growing for a thousand years; an oak tree has been growing for a thousand years. All of these sentences have identical predicate components in their original structure.
However, initial structures with all their closeness are not always connected with surface structures by semantic equivalence. The logic of a predicate cannot always be reduced to one interpretation, even if the components are correlated by voice. For example:
- New trees grown in the old garden.
- New trees were grown in the old garden.
Isn't it true that the same words, upon closer examination, have a slightly different meaning?
Semantic interpretation
Further development of this model is going to reduce the gap between the surface and the original representations in the sentence. With different initial structures, both active and passive variants will be interpreted differently, although equivalent pairs are semantically quite possible. The grammar is built in such a way that for these types of sentences all syntactic structures are set separately, and the transformation does not affect the final result when a passive variant with a surface is obtained.sentence structure.
It just happens that syntactic representations are translated into semantic representations with the help of grammatical rules, establishing the proximity or even equivalence of the corresponding surface structures. Moreover, the same sentence can have a semantic interpretation of several types of predicate at once.
Predicate logic
A predicate is a statement to which arguments are added. If one argument is substituted, the predicate will express its property, if more, then it will draw the relationship between all arguments. For example: oak - tree; spruce - tree. Here the property is expressed - to be a tree. This means that this predicate is represented by both oak and spruce. Next example: Bast shoes are woven from bast. The word "bast shoes" will be the predicate here, and the rest of the words will be the arguments, since they refer to it and do not have sufficient independence in themselves. Woven - bast shoes. From bast - bast shoes.
Propositional logic has a too narrowly defined language and therefore is not suitable for human reasoning, so 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 the logic of the proposition, it is necessary to write this down in three separate fragments without any connection with each other. And the language of predicates immediately distinguishes two main ones: "to be mortal" and "to be human". Then the first sentence in the densest waycontacts them.
Components
The semantic structure of the sentence has its own categories. These are predicates that convey a state or a specific action, actants - subjects of an action or objects of various kinds (direct, indirect, resultative, and so on), circonstants - various circumstances as a field for performing actions.
For example: At night, a tree knocked on the window with branches. Detailing here, one might say, is maximum. The active action predicate will be the word "knocked". Next come the actants: the subject - "tree", the object - "through the window", the instrumental - "branches". The circus constant (or temporative, or circumstance of time) is the word "at night". But a second, locative one may also appear - "from the street", for example.
Components
Predicates are composed according to the semantic principle in the following way: predicates proper (for example, states) and actants (event participants). Semantically, actants also have a division into types:
- A subject (in other words, an agent) is an actor of a subject type or an active actor. For example: a tree grows.
- An object is an addressee of a direct or indirect action, whether or not it is directly affected. For example: a cat catches a mouse.
- Instrumentative - an object without which the situation cannot be realized. For example: ate soup.
- Result - designation of the result of the actions taken. For example: grass grew in spring.
Besides, you can't do without circumstantials - the circumstances of the action. They are also divided into groups. The two most frequent and basic are the temporative and the locative. For example: it gets warm in spring. The word "spring" is a temporative. Lilacs are blooming everywhere. The word "everywhere" is a locative.
Conclusion
In order to learn to accurately establish the subject and predicate in a judgment, and this is extremely important both for one's own eloquence and for the most accurate understanding of someone else's thought, one must very clearly understand what is the subject in this statement, and what speaks about it qualities.
