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There are two competing notions of the predicate in theories of grammar.〔See Carnie (2007:51).〕 The first concerns traditional grammar, which tends to view a predicate as one of two main parts of a sentence, the other part being the subject; the purpose of the predicate is to complete an idea about the subject, such as what it does or what it is like. The second notion was derived from work in predicate calculus (predicate logic, first order logic) and is prominent in modern theories of syntax and grammar. In this approach, the predicate of a sentence mostly corresponds to the main verb and any auxiliaries that accompany the main verb; whereas the arguments of that predicate (e.g. the subject and object noun phrases) are outside the predicate. The competition between these two concepts has generated confusion concerning the use of the term ''predicate'' in theories of grammar. This article considers both of these notions. ==Predicates in traditional grammar== The predicate in traditional grammar is inspired by propositional logic of antiquity (as opposed to the more modern predicate logic).〔Concerning Aristotelian logic as the source for the binary subject-predicate division of the sentence, see Matthews (1981:102).〕 A predicate is seen as a property that a subject has or is characterized by. A predicate is therefore an expression that can be ''true of'' something.〔See Kroeger (2005:53).〕 Thus, the expression "is moving" is true of anything that is moving. This classical understanding of predicates was adopted more or less directly into Latin and Greek grammars and from there it made its way into English grammars, where it is applied directly to the analysis of sentence structure. It is also the understanding of predicates in English-language dictionaries. The predicate is one of the two main parts of a sentence (the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies).〔See for instance The American Heritage College Dictionary (1993:1077) and The Miriam Webster's Dictionary (2004:566).〕 The predicate must contain a verb, and the verb requires or permits other elements to complete the predicate, or it precludes them from doing so. These elements are objects (direct, indirect, prepositional), predicatives, and adjuncts: ::She dances. - verb-only predicate ::Ben reads the book. - verb + direct object predicate ::Ben's mother, Felicity, gave me a present. - verb + indirect object + direct object predicate ::She listened to the radio. - verb + prepositional object predicate ::They elected him president. - verb + object + predicative noun predicate ::She met him in the park. - verb + object + adjunct predicate ::She is in the park. - verb + predicative prepositional phrase predicate The predicate provides information about the subject, such as what the subject is, what the subject is doing, or what the subject is like. The relation between a subject and its predicate is sometimes called a nexus. A ''predicative nominal'' is a noun phrase that functions as the main predicate of a sentence, such as ''George III is the king of England'', ''the king of England'' being the predicative nominal. The subject and predicative nominal must be connected by a linking verb, also called a copula. A ''predicative adjective'' is an adjective that functions as a predicate, such as ''Ivano is attractive'', ''attractive'' being the predicative adjective. The subject and predicative adjective must also be connected by a copula. This traditional understanding of predicates has a concrete reflex in all phrase structure theories of syntax. These theories divide the generic declarative sentence (S) into a noun phrase (NP) and verb phrase (VP), e.g.〔Constituency trees like the one here, which divides the sentence into a subject NP and a predicate VP, can be found in most textbooks on syntax and grammar, e.g. Carnie (2007), although the trees of these textbooks will vary in important details.〕 ::Predicate tree 1 The subject NP is shown in green, and the predicate VP in blue. This concept of sentence structure stands in stark contrast to dependency structure theories of grammar, which place the finite verb (= conjugated verb) as the root of all sentence structure and thus reject this binary NP-VP division. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Predicate (grammar)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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