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Unit 5

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weewoomeemoo1
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Linguistic Theories

4th year
Second Term

Dr. Rania Galal


Faculty of Women
Ain Shams University
SEMANTICS
UNIT 5
PREDICATES

Dr. Rania Galal


Predicator
 The PREDICATOR of a simple declarative sentence is the word (or a
group of words) which does not belong to any of the referring
expressions and which, makes the most specific contribution to the
meaning of the sentence.

 The predicator describes the state or process in which the referring


expressions are involved.
Predicators

Nouns Prepositions

Verbs Adjectives
Predicator
 The predicators in sentences can be of various parts of speech:
adjectives (red, asleep, hungry), verbs (write, play, place),
prepositions (in, between, behind), and nouns (student, genius).

 Words of other parts of speech, such as conjunctions (and, but, or) and
articles (the, a), can not serve as predicators in sentences.

Examples
1.John wrote a letter. [Verb]
2.He is hungry. [Adjective]
3.The cat is under the table. [Preposition]
4.She is a teacher. [Noun]
Arguments
The semantic analysis of simple declarative sentences reveals two
major semantic roles played by different subparts of the sentence.
These are the role of predicator and the role(s) of argument(s), played by
the referring expression(s).
Examples
1. My Car is blue.
2. Einstein was a genius.
3. The hospital is outside the city.
4. John sold his car.
Predicates
A PREDICATE is any word (or sequence of words) which can function
as the predicator of a sentence.

Examples
hungry, in, asleep, hit, show, bottle, are all predicates; and, or, but, not,
are not predicates.
Predicate & Predicator

 The term ‘predicator’ identifies the semantic role played by a


particular word (or group of words) in a particular sentence.

 A simple sentence only has one predicator, although it may well


contain more than one instance of a predicate.
Example A tall, handsome stranger entered the saloon. P.49

This sentence has just one predicator, enter, but the sentence also
contains the words tall, handsome, stranger, and saloon, all of
which are predicates, and can function as predicators in other
sentences.
Examples
John is tall.
He is handsome.
He is a stranger.
That building is a saloon.
The Degree of
Predicates

The DEGREE of a predicate is a number indicating the number of


arguments it is normally understood to have in simple sentences.

Examples

John hit Bill. [Two-place Predicate]


John died. [One-place Predicate]
John gave Ann a book. [Three-place Predicate]
The Degree of Predicates

 Sometimes two predicates can have nearly, the same


sense, but be of different grammatical parts of speech.

Examples
1. Ronald is foolish, Ronald is a fool. [One-place Predicate]
2. Tomy is afraid of cats, Tomy fears cats. [Two-place
Predicate]
3. My parrot is a talker, My parrot talks. [One-place Predicate]
p.53
Semantic Roles

Predicators Arguments

Verbs,
Adjectives, Referring
Nouns, Expressions
Prepositions
THANK YOU

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