Predicate-functor logic, as founded by W. V. Quine ([1960], [1971], [1976], [1981]), is first-order predicate logic without individual variables. Instead, adverbs or predicate functors make explicit the permutations and replications of argument-places familiarly indicated by shifting variables about. For the history of this approach, see Quine [1971, 309ff.]. With the evaporation of variables, individual constants naturally assimilate to singleton predicates or adverbs, leaving no logical subjects whatever of type 0. The orphaned “predicates” may then be taken simply as terms in the sense of traditional logic: class and relational terms on model-theoretic semantics, schematic terms on Quine's denotational or truth-of semantics. Predicate-functor logic thus stands forth as the pre-eminent first-order term logic, as distinct from propositional-quantificational logic. By the same token, it might with some justification qualify as “first-order combinatory logic”, with allowance for some categorization of the sort eschewed in general combinatory logic, the ultimate term logic.

Over the years, Quine has put forward various choices of primitive predicate functors for first-order logic with or without the full theory of identity. Moreover, he has provided translations of quantificational into predicate-functor notation and vice versa ([1971, 312f.], [1981, 651]). Such a translation does not of itself establish semantic completeness, however, in the absence of a proof that it preserves deducibility.

An axiomatization of predicate-functor logic was first published by Kuhn [1980], using primitives rather like Quine's. As Kuhn noted, “The axioms and rules have been chosen to facilitate the completeness proof” [1980, 153]. While this expedient simplifies the proof, however, it limits the depth of analysis afforded by the axioms and rules. Mindful of this problem, Kuhn ([1981] and [1983]) boils his axiom system down considerably, correcting certain minor slips in the original paper.