Questioning the concept of predication
Abstract
It is a common practice to consider that all sentences can be divided into two separate units traditionally called subject (NP) and predicate (VP). Applying this type of analysis to all sentences poses a major problem, that of not being able then to tell apart sentences whose structures have nothing in common and whose purposes are totally different. Talking of predication for both: “She went to France”. and “She did go to France”. just does not make any sense in so far as the components of these two sentences do not have the same status at all. The meta-operational approach distinguishes between Subject + Verb (+ Object) and NP/VP types of sentences. In the latter case, the structure NP/VP codes a non assertive status of the units forming the sentence. The whole concept of predication must then be re-examined, which we propose to do in our presentation. Analyses are based on examples taken from French and English and will deal with grammatical items taken from both languages. A few words are said about German and Polish.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/ff.2018.36.1.69-86
Date of publication: 2018-11-05 11:24:36
Date of submission: 2018-02-01 09:34:01
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