a theory of predicates a theory of predicates ackerman , farrell ( university of california , san diego ) and webelhuth , gert ( university of north carolina , chapel hill ) ; a theory of predicates ; isbn : 1-57586 - 087 - 2 ( cloth ) , 1-57586 - 086 - 4 ( paper ) ; 402 pp . csli publications 1998 : http : / / csli-www . stanford . edu / publications / email : pubs @ roslin . stanford . edu in this work two linguists from different theoretical paradigms develop a new general theory of natural language predicates . this theory is capable of addressing a broad range of issues concerning ( complex ) predicates , many of which remain unresolved in previous theoretical proposals . grounded in empirical evidence from a wide variety of genetically and geographically unrelated languages ( german , hungarian , fox , nenets , tzotzil , malayalam , among others ) , this new theory synthesizes conceptual and representational assumptions from several different theoretical traditions . the authors focus on cross-linguistically recurring patterns of predicate formation where identical contentive notions ( i . e . , lexical semantic , grammatical function , and morphosyntactic information ) are expressed by predicates consisting of a single morphological word or by combinations of independent words that need not form a single syntactic unit . they provide a detailed implementation of their theory for german tense-aspect , passive , causative , and verb-particle predicates . in addition , the authors discuss extensions of these representative analyses to the same predicate constructions in other languages . beyond providing a formalism for the analysis of language-particular predicates , they demonstrate how the basic theoretical mechanisms they develop can be employed to explain universal tendencies of predicate formation . for this purpose , ackerman and webelhuth introduce the construct ` grammatical archetype ' into linguistic theory , relating universal patterns of predicate formation to language-particular patterns in a principled fashion . this book will be of interest to linguists and grammarians from any generative , cognitive / functional , or traditional perspective . in addition , it is accessible to interested philosophers , psycholinguists , cognitive scientists , computational linguists , anthropological linguists , and philologists . * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * csli publications ventura hall stanford university stanford , ca 94305-4115 telephone ( 650 ) 723-1839 fax ( 650 ) 725-2166 http : / / csli-www . stanford . edu / publications