Relacja: predykat > argument – centralne ogniwo struktury tekstu

Starting with the assumption that the proposition (i.e. predicate > argument(s) structure) is the basic unit of the semantic structure of the text, the author argues that the relation > predicate > argument in its turn is the basic link in the process of the construction of the text. She distinguishes three types of predicates: (a) those which inform about the relations between the parts of the world around us and about the characteristics of these parts (cf. ‘stand’, ‘sleep’, ‘build’, ‘destroy’, ‘white’, ‘old’, ‘tall’, ‘man’, ‘animal’, ‘river’, sea’) and which accept arguments whose referents are parts of that world; (b) those which inform about our mental, emotional, volitional reactions to that world (cf. ‘think’, ‘know’, ‘like’, ‘wish’, ‘want’, ‘ask’, ‘command’) and which accept also arguments whose referents are events, states of affairs, processes, i.e. propositional arguments; (c) those which inform about the ways of our thinking and concluding about the events, states, processes happening around us (cf. ‘coexist’, ‘exclude’, ‘succeed’, ‘precede’, ‘overlap’, ‘cause’, ‘let’, ‘stipulate’, ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘before’, after’, because’, ‘if’) and which only accept propositional arguments. She concludes that however complex and/or context dependent a sentence is, it should be understood and interpreted as a hierarchically organized proposition.