Acceso usuarios
Wolfgang Wildgen
The concept of predication has its philosophical roots in Plato and Aristotle. The first section reviews the modern development since Peirce's relational logic and describes traditional pitfalls in the treatment of predication. In section two the traditional reduction of predication to constructions with an auxiliary is critically assessed and a new, dynamical treatment of predication is developed, which draws from another tradition, that of dynamic systems theory and more specifically catastrophe theory. For two basic types of predication (predication with copula (or Ø-copula) and predication with simple (dynamical) verb) the new type of description is demonstrated. Section three considers the semantics of verbs entering into phrasal constructions, and more specifically verbs of locomotion, motion, action and change. Five basic domains of locomotion/motion/action/change are distinguished and catastrophe theoretical schemata are proposed for them. A consequence of this analysis is a new classification of verbs of motion and of semantic roles. Section four treats some elaborations of the basic schemata proposed in section four. In the final section more marginal cases of predication are discussed and conclusions regarding the nature of predication are drawn.
