1. PREDICATIVITY
In the sentence is a syntactic category that is the means of expressing a thought. Predicativity has nothing to do with the relation between the sentence and reality. Predicativity is a structural feature of the sentence and is the backbone of human thinking and linguistic statements. Simply, it means 'saying sth about sth ' ; it comprises relation of dependence between two members - one member which is what the statement is about, which is subjected to description (the subject) and another member which predicates sth about the Subject, which describes the Subject, ascribes features and characteristics to the Subject.E.g: The sky is blue.
'the sky' is what the sentence is about (Subject) and 'is blue' is the Predicate characterizing the Subject. Predicativity is binary relation(S-P); The Subject and the Predicate are correlative notions - a Subject functions only in correlation to a certain Predicate and vice versa.
The predicate relation is different from the attributive relation - only the former expresses a thought, statement, whereas the latter is like a label of some entity or phenomenon.
cf. nice house - attributive expression, 'label' of some house;
The house is / could be / must have been nice. - predicative relation, expresses a thought / statement about the house.
According to Reformatskiy, predicativity is the main relation in the sentence; it is the nucleus, the basis of communication. The predicative relation corresponds to an act of thinking. In this act the subject of thought combines predicatively with its characteristics. This act of combining a subject with a predicate /two notions/ results in a thought. In the real world objects and their features are not separated, which can be illustrated with the so-called attributive word combinations like: blue sky, white clouds. Human reasoning singles out the separate components of reality and then relates them to each other predicatively as a subject and predicate,
E.g.: The sky is blue. The clouds are white.
