Talk:Predicate (grammar)

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Actually John is being sick is good English, but means that John is vomiting (as we speak). Charles Matthews 14:47, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

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[edit] biased English POV?

What about Chinese - it doesn't need a copula to equate a subject to an adjectival predicate. French has many of its object pronouns come before the verb. Marking NPOV and world on this one. John Riemann Soong 01:25, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Last I checked, this is the english version of wikipedia, and thus this content is relevent to the english language. You may wish to expand on the article to include grammar in other languages, but this is hardly a problem with point of view. Removing flag... Tiranak
Last time I checked, the notion of "predicate" was relevant to more languages than English. I do agree that it's natural for the English wiki to exemplify things in that langueage, though, so I agree that the flag should be removed. But take it easy. Neither 05:15, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Predicates in logic and linguistics

I think that this article conflates the different ideas of predicates in logic and linguistics. I think it should be clear which is which. In traditional European grammar, as the article says, the predicate is the part of the sentence following the subject (ie verb, objects and adjuncts). Later, in logic, it came to be used for the class of units that in languages roughly correspond to verbs and adjectives. In Modern linguistics the word was borrowed back again from logic, and used by people like Vendler to refer to verbs (*not* including objects). So, I think the first sentence of the article is misleading. Linguistics, per se, does not have the notion of propositional truth. The statement that a predicate is something that has a truth value, could be dropped altogether. If it is retained, I suggest it is introduced with something like "On the other hand, in logic ...". Secondly, I think the statement is factually incorrect. It is a proposition, rather than the predicate that it contains, that has a truth value. Here's a supporting quote from R. L. Trask, 1993, "A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics":

"1. That constituent of a sentence, most typically a verb phrase, which combines with the subject NP to make up the complete sentence. ... 2. A verb, or a complex structure consisting of a verb or auxiliary plus a closely bound meaningful element, when this is considered as linguistic unit which can or must combine with specified arguments or participant roles to make up a clause. Grammatically, they are classified in terms of their valency, the number and types of uints which they require. There are also grammatically relevant semantic classifications, the best-known of which is that of Vendler (1967). ... 3. In formal logic, an element which must combine with a specified number of arguments to make up a well-formed expression; the linguistic use of 'predicate' in sense 2 is directly derived from this logical usage."

This is my first time contributing to Wikipedia, so please excuse me if my wiki-ettiquette is lacking. Brian.Murphy@cs.tcd.ie

I agree that there is a discrepancy between the notion of a predicate in trad grammar and that in current linguistic theory, but I disagree that there's any conflation in the article as it was. The point is that current semantic theory is a branch of applied mathemetical logic. And this is not just a parochial view, but rather the mainstream approach to the meaning of natural language these days. Also the statement in the first paragraph is not that a predicate has a truth value but rather, that it is true of something. This is perfectly in keeping with practices in both logic and linguistics, and it's not controversial. But the previous version did downplay the traditional notion by not mentioning it in the first paragraph, and I agree that that needed improvement. So I've tried to remedy that in the new version. Concerning the Vendler classes, it's true that Vendler himself used them to classify verbs, not predicates, but there is consensus now that the classification applies to predicates rather than verbs. In fact, the paragraph about the Vendler classes discusses this, and there are references below to back it up. I've also removed the flag. Neither 13:48, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Every example in this article has the verb in either the present or past tense. As a layman who knows nothing about formal linguistics, it strikes me that lots of the things mentioned here change with future-tense verbs. E.g.
John will be sick
cannot be a static Vendler class the way "John is sick" is as we can say
John will be sick in an hour
(he just ate a bad oyster). A few examples from you linguistic types would help clear up some confusion amongst us non-linguistic types.--Longpete 08:46, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

yeah, you're right, things change with tenses. But what happens when you use "in an hour" with future tense is that it takes on a slightly different meaning from what it normally has, something like, ``an hour from now." That seems to be a property of the expression "in an hour" in English. Other languages have separate expressions for those meanings of "in an hour." The Vendler classes are supposed to apply to any language, so one has to be careful what tense one puts the predicate in. Future is a bad choice, since it will influence the result, as we have just seen, and the present progressive (John is running) is another bad choice. The best choice of tense to carry out the in an hour test in English is simple past. That doesn't show that the test is wong, though! Neither 04:25, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] s-l versus i-l predicates

I don't follow the argument here.

"John is hungry" is given as an example of an s-l predicate. However, in the section on i-l predicates, we have:

There are firemen available. ("available" is s-l)

  • There are firemen altruistic. ("altruistic" is i-l)

This leads me to conclude that "There are firemen hungry" is well-formed, which it isn't. Of course, we can say "There are hungry firemen", but we can also say "There are altruistic firemen".

It isn't clear to me in these "There are..." sentences what the subject is - 'there'? --Nyelvmark 19:38, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "In traditional grammar..."

Okay, "traditional" is being used often throughout the grammar wiki pages. Since "modern" grammar is not discussed, either we need to state "In traditional and modern grammar..." or drop "traditional".

I suggest dropping "In traditional grammar," and simply begin with "A predicate is...". Lets use the active voice.