This chapter addresses secondary predicates (SPs), those elements conveying an additional predication on top of the first predication featured by the main verbal form. Slavic secondary predicates follow the regular pattern, typical of most Indo-European languages, of a non-verbal element related to an argument in the clause. Having defined the concept, the author discusses the following types of this phenomenon in Slavic languages: (a) depictive secondary predication and (b) regular (final state) and trajectory resultative constructions. She also presents non-verbal predicates in argument position, which share some features with secondary predication.

This chapter introduces parts of speech (PoS) and their functions in Chinese. The PoS that are introduced include the major categories of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. The unique category of classifiers (measure words) and the minor categories of numbers, pronouns, modal verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and particles are also discussed.

This chapter gives an overview of the grammatical features of Chinese adjectives and how to use them, specifically the way they can be used as the main predicate in a sentence. The forms and functions of the reduplication of adjectives are also discussed.

This chapter introduces the two essential parts of a simple sentence: the subject and the predicate. A detailed discussion is provided on the various linguistic forms that can serve as the subject and the predicate, as well as their grammatical features.

The present chapter strives to elaborate simple heuristics that might further the elaboration of p-solutions or p-resolutions of p-inconsistencies. We will take Moravcsik’s () typology of the treatment of conflicts as our starting point and we will attempt to integrate it into the p-model. After the brief Introduction (), inwe will present the examples given in Moravcsik (). Starting from her analyses, we will re-analyse the examples with the help of the p-model’s categories and will provide a new approach to the resolution strategies. Finally, in , we will summarise the main components of the heuristics we have revealed.

It is often held that only by the time of the late Sophist did Plato discover a way of dealing with puzzles about the possibility of false judgement and false statement. Earlier dialogues such as Euthydemus and Theaetetus which introduce the puzzles are thought to labour under assumptions about how language relates to reality, born of inexperience in semantics, that stood in his way. Here it is argued that in both those dialogues Plato is in fact doing something subtler than captivity to a crude picture of the way language works would allow. A more attentive reading of these two texts makes it clear that he has already identified the structural relation between subject and predicate as the key: not only to understanding how false judgement is possible, but through that to bigger questions about the relation of thought and language to the world in general. The Euthydemus, in particular, shows us how many more ways there are for an argument to go wrong than are dreamed of in the logic books. It even suggests that a failure in logic may sometimes be simultaneously a failure in love.

The clause is a special kind of phrase with a verb phrase (VP) as its head, also called its predicate. The subject is an external complement (outside the VP). Though traditional definitions of the subject fail, subjects have some characteristic properties. Notably, they usually precede the VP, but some interrogative constructions feature subject-auxiliary inversion, in which the subject is preceded by an auxiliary verb; subject pronouns are usually nominative case. Semantically, subjects are typically the predicand, a semantic term for what a predicate applies to. Objects are internal complements, and pronoun objects are usually accusative case. Some verbs license two objects: direct and indirect. The verb ‘be’ and a few others take predicative complements. Like objects, predicative complements are internal complements. Unlike objects, they can be adjective phrases and they never correspond to any passive subject. There are ascriptive and specifying uses of ‘be’. Internal complements also include various subordinate-clause and preposition-phrase complements.

The two authors come apart here, not simply because Ruse is a nonbeliever and Davies a practicing Christian. Ruse was raised a Quaker and so, thinking theologically, he thinks in a Quaker context. More than anything he is accepting (or he would be if he were still a believer) of apophatic theology. One cannot say what God is but rather what He is not. How one works out the details of the Trinity are not that important. One is committed to the Trinity on faith, and for the rest – “now we see through a glass darkly.” For Davies, by contrast, theology is grounded in the thinking of the great theologians. He believes one can make progress on understanding the Trinity. Here is where the clash comes, not so much because Ruse is a nonbeliever, but because his theology tells him that all such attempts as those of Davies are bound to fail. 1 + 1 + 1 ≠ 1.

Extends discussion of infinitival syntax beyond relative clauses to constructions where the noun phrase interpreted as the subject of the infinitival predicate is pronounced the subject of a predicate that contains the infinitival clause, a syntactic phenomenon called “displacement”. Displacement also occurs with finite subordinate clauses, where the finite clause is interpreted as part of a predicate adjective phrase but is pronounced the subject of that predicate. Passive predicates also allow this type of displacement and the displacement of an infinitival subject to the subject position of the clause that contains it. In single clauses, passives require the displacement of a predicate object to subject position. This generalizes within a single noun phrase where the noun is either a derived nominal or a gerund. The utility of displacement is discussed, including the history of criticism against the use of passive voice, which is shown to be completely misguided, and the role of displacement in discourse via paragraph structure, examining how strong paragraphs can be rendered awful by eliminating displacement.