Predicate

This article presents the notions of predicate and predication from the viewpoint of Functional Grammar (FG). Although these are traditionally semantic notions, FG regards them as being above all instrumental in verbal interaction, on the basis of the conviction that pragmatics is the all-encompassing framework within which semantics and syntax must be studied. Recent work in FG has given substance to this programmatic statement, leading to the elaboration of a Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG). This revised model seeks to capture the specific contributions made by pragmatics, semantics and syntax to the form of utterances in communication.

T-SQL, dialect of SQL, is a language used for a relational database management system (primarily Microsoft’s SQL Server), which in turn is based on the relational model. Understanding some of the key foundation principals can help in a better understanding of the language.
This paper introduces basics of the relational model and the difference between the relational model and the actual T-SQL implementation.Several tightly related topics like predicates, relations, and common misconceptions about databases are also discussed.

There is a morpheme li in Mauritian Creole (MC), which is homophonous with the 3sg pronoun (meaning ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’, ‘him’, ‘her’), and which, in the early creole, occurs frequently between the subject and the predicate in affirmative, present tense clauses. It occurred only with count nouns, and initially served to mark the subject as singular and referential. Following the loss of the French determiner system in the early stages of creolization, the new language lacked determiners to mark these semantic features on NPs. I propose that li may have originated as a resumptive pronoun, co-referential with the subject, but following the grammaticalization of new determiner elements to mark the semantic contrasts of [±definite] and singular vs. plural, li has now grammaticalized into a predicate marker (PM). Its presence is sensitive to both the nature of the predicate, and to the definiteness and specificity features of the subject NP. It now occurs only in non-tensed affirmative cla...

Tentative a presenter les premiers pas d'une semantique-comportant-l'ontologie et d'une ontologie-recapitulant-la semantique. L'A. insiste sur la differenciation de sa conception de celles d'autres auteurs dans ces deux domaines (L.Wittgenstein, F.B.Fitch, D.C.Williams, K.Campell) par l'introduction et l'usage de la notion de primary states of affaires, seuls constituants de la structure categorielle du monde.

It is a commonly accepted view in the Hungarian linguistic literature that sentence structure is determined by information structure, viewed as a phrase structure theoretic interpretation of the topic–comment articulation of the sentence. There is a designated topic position at the left edge of the sentence, namely SpecTopP, hosting constituents that are claimed to be in a predicative relation with the rest of the sentence. On this view, topic–comment and logical subject–logical predicate are considered to be synonymous notions. We argue that the notion of topic as used in the Hungarian literature poses some serious problems, which can only be eliminated if the pragmatic aspects of topichood are separated from its semantic function entailing the development of a two-level approach to information structure. Topic and logical subject belong to two different levels with topic being an essentially pragmatic notion and logical subject being a syntactico-semantic notion. On this analysis the basic syntactic structure of the Hungarian sentence is determined by the articulation “logical subject–logical predicate” rather than by the articulation “topic-comment”. The proposed analysis has important typological consequences.

The paper investigates the stative psych verb (such as mwusep-ta 'be-frightening(-to)') construction in Korean with an 'EXP' with a topic marker. Syntactic restrictions on this construction are considered; the construction is compared with other stative verb constructions and with the so-called "double-nominative" construction. It is argued that certain idiosyncratic features of the psych stative verbs construction are related to the 'EXP' NP being highly discourse prominent, i.e. being "narrator", or "hero/ main personage" of a text passage. In terms of Sells (1987), 'EXP' is identified with the 'subject of a psychological state' discourse role. The paper thus presents additional Korean data in favor of Sells's "discourse roles" approach originally based on cross-linguistic data on long-distance reflexives.

This paper examines a type of noun incorporation and its related patterns of doubling in Budai Rukai (Austronesian, Taiwan). An incorporated nominal root is indefinite and forms a close morphological bond with the incorporating verb. The nominal root modifies the predicate semantically and does not act as a direct object. The resulting forms describe various activities and exhibit properties of (in)transitivity and (a)telicity. Noun incorporation of such is formed by an array of verbal prefixes and nominal roots, while doubling is limited to a handful of complex verbs.

Los factores diferenciales entre una y otra construccioón han sido captados mediante la "Hipótesis de la Definición" (HD)3, que establece que la distinción radica en la interrelación entre orden de constituyentes y estructura prágmatica, la cual se halla condicionada por la definición/indefinición del termino sujeto: el núcleo de la hipótesis establece que los sintagmas nominales definidos preceden a los no-definidos.

In this paper, a semantic classification for Persian adjectival preverbs based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory is presented: adjectival preverbs that demonstrate metaphorical shift and adjectival preverbs which lack metaphorical shift. The metaphors involved in the first subclass of adjectival preverbs are motivated by a certain type of conceptual metonymy known as “Effect for Cause”. The second subclass covers preverbs whose combinations with the light verb does not show any metaphorical shift. Having detected two mentioned cognitive processes in the formation of the semantics of the complex predicates containing the first subclass of preverbs, the compositional nature of the semantics of the predicates was realized and two new meanings for “kærdæn” (to do) as a light verb in Persian complex predicates were proposed: to become and to make oneself. Another finding of this paper is the introduction of “/pejda kærd/” as the first two-word light verb of Persian.

In his Logical Investigations Edmund Husserl distinguishes between two ap-proaches to logic that he terms respectively 'objective' and 'phenomenological'. The first of these is an approach that was as prevalent among professional logicians of Husserl's day, as it is of ours. It ...

Predicate testing is a common approach to software testing, which requires certain types of tests for each predicate in a program. The main difficulty in predicate testing is testing compound predicates. One way to test a compound predicate C is to traverse all combinations of "t" and "f" for each simple predicate in C. But this approach requires a large number of tests. Recently, a predicate testing approach that reduces the number of tests required to detect possible errors in compound predicates has been proposed. This approach includes three predicate-based test generation criteria, called BOR (boolean operator), BRO (boolean and relational operator), and BRE (boolean and relational expression) testing criteria. Also, the paper describes a system that implements this approach for testing compound predicates in C++ programs. Finally, the paper presents the results of the experiments that have been carried out to evaluate the error-exposing ability of the system, and the testing criteria employed in it, and to compare the percentage coverage of these criteria.

Lecture held at the conference
LANGUAGES: NATURAL, HUMAN AND ARTIFICIAL SYSTEMS OF COMMUNICATION,
The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities,
February 6, 2017 —
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeZHmcI0PaA> ————

See also "Syntax, prosody, discourse and Information Structure: The case for Unipartite clauses A View from Spoken Israeli Hebrew" in the Papers section.

This paper is a cross-linguistic investigation of meteorological expressions (such asit is snowingorthe wind blows). The paper proposes a three-fold typology of meteorological constructions according to the element primarily responsible for the coding of weather. In the predicate type, a predicate expresses the meteorological event, while an argument has other functions. In the argument type, an argument is responsible for expressing weather, while any eventual predicate is semantically rather vacuous. In the argument-predicate type, finally, both a predicate and an argument are involved. All types include subtypes, depending on the syntactic valency and the parts of speech of the elements involved. Building upon the typology of constructions, a typology of languages is also proposed based on the coding of precipitation and temperature.

A parallel is drawn between two clause-types carrying an obligatory pro-form:wh-questions and the so-called free relative of pseudo-clefts. In the analysis both types are derived from a single counterpart which is structurally simpler. The constituent targeted in the former and focused in the latter always corresponds to the VP of their counterpart. The mandatory verbfare‘do’that occurs in the question and in the free relative is analyzed as a support verb. In both cases its origin is traceable to the syntactic function of the pro-form, which is claimed to be double, in that it simultaneously works as a predicate and an argument (direct object).