Suggested Answers for Check Questions

The notion ‘predicate’ is easy to grasp: there is something we make a statement about. That ‘something’ is the subject and the statement about it is the predicate. Apart from verbs DPs, APs and PPs may also function as predicates, e.g. Mary is a teacher, Mary is beautiful, Mary is at home or They elected Mary chairperson, They consider Mary beautiful, They want Mary in the committee. The first three sentences show that the verb ‘be’ (a so-called linking verb or copular verb) does not constitute much to the predication expressed in them. This is further illustrated by the second three sentences where each contains two statements where the second is lacking a verb. Each predicate has a set of elements that minimally have to be included when it is used say, in a sentence, we call these participants minimally involved in expressing the meaning of the predicate arguments. Arguments are theta-marked by their predicates, each receives a label that identifies the part it plays in relation to the meaning of the predicate.