theory predicate theory predicates ackerman farrell university californium san diego webelhuth gert university north carolina chapel hill theory predicates isbn cloth paper pp csli publication http csliwww stanford edu publication email pub roslin stanford edu work two linguist different theoretical paradigm develop general theory natural language predicate theory capable address broad range issue concern complex predicate many remain unresolve previous theoretical proposal ground empirical evidence wide variety genetically geographically unrelate language german hungarian fox nenet tzotzil malayalam among theory synthesize conceptual representational assumption several different theoretical tradition author focus crosslinguistically recur pattern predicate formation where identical contentive notion e lexical semantic grammatical function morphosyntactic information express predicate consist single morphological word combination independent word need form single syntactic unit provide detail implementation theory german tenseaspect passive causative verbparticle predicate addition author discuss extension representative analysis same predicate construction language beyond provide formalism analysis languageparticular predicate demonstrate basic theoretical mechanism develop employ explain universal tendency predicate formation purpose ackerman webelhuth introduce construct grammatical archetype linguistic theory relate universal pattern predicate formation languageparticular pattern principle fashion book interest linguist grammarian generative cognitive functional traditional perspective addition accessible interest philosopher psycholinguist cognitive scientist computational linguist anthropological linguist philologist csli publication ventura hall stanford university stanford ca telephone fax http csliwww stanford edu publication 