Predicate (grammar) - Predicates in Modern Theories of Syntax and Grammar

Predicates in Modern Theories of Syntax and Grammar

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:

Bob laughed. → laughed (Bob) or, laughed = ƒ(Bob)

Sam helped us. → helped (Sam, us)

Jim gave Jill his dog. → gave (Jim, Jill, his dog)

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 are 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:

Bill will have laughed.

Will Bill have laughed?

That is funny.

Has that been funny?

They had been satisfied.

Had they been satisfied, ...

The butter is in the drawer.

Fred took a picture of Sue.

Susan is pulling your leg.

Who did Jim give his dog to?

You should give it up.

Note that not just verbs can be part of the matrix predicate, but also adjectives, nouns, prepositions, etc. The understanding of predicates suggested by these examples sees the main predicate of a clause consisting of at least one verb and a variety of other possible words. The words of the predicate need not form a string nor a constituent, but rather they can be interrupted by their arguments (and/or adjuncts). The approach to predicates illustrated with these sentences is widespread in Europe, particularly in Germany, where the understanding predicates from traditional grammar discussed above seems to hardly exist (for those who know German, see the Wikipedia article in German on the predicate).

This modern understanding of predicates is compatible with the dependency grammar approach to sentence structure, which places the finite verb as the root of all structure, e.g.

The matrix predicate is (again) marked in blue and its two arguments are in green. While the predicate cannot be construed as a constituent in the formal sense, it is a catena. Barring a discontinuity, predicates and their arguments are always catenae in dependency structures.