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.