The Basic Syntagmatic Act is Predication

This article considers three periods of the theory of predication in the Prague Linguistic\r\nCircle. The first belongs to the classical period, the second to the 1960s and the final and\r\ncurrent one begins in the 1990s. The work of three particular authors, Mathesius, Daneš, and Sgall,\r\nis discussed. Four questions arise: 1) Was Mathesius an inspirational source for the second 1929\r\nThesis? 2) What were the historical and epistemological roots of the rather strong link between\r\nphilosophy of language and linguistics during the first period? 3) Why is indexicality not recognized\r\nby Daneš as the semiotic device which associates predication with those aspects of the sentence\r\nwhich potentially place it in relation with a situation? 4)Why is the relationship between\r\nthe Praguian idea of ‘function’ and the Fregean one, i.e. the logico-semantic concept which gives\r\nfoundation to the philosophical truth-functional approach in semantics, and which explains the\r\nso-called “predicative-argumental structure”, not recognized as noteworthy? What, in fact, is\r\na function? In conclusion, this article sketches the project of a Latin Dependency Treebank developed\r\non the basis of the PDT, which bears witness to the far-reaching implications of the Circle’s\r\nwork and to an international, intercontinental prosecution of a tâche abordée.