predication

in logic, the attributing of characteristics to a subject to produce a meaningful statement combining verbal and nominal elements. Thus, a characteristic such as "warm" (conventionally symbolized by a capital letter W) may be predicated of some singular subject, for example, a dish-symbolized by a small letter d, often called the "argument." The resulting statement is "This dish is warm"; i.e., Wd. Using ~ to symbolize "not," the denial ~Wd can also be predicated. If that of which "warm" is predicated is indefinite, a blank may be left for the predicate, W-, or the variable x may be employed, Wx, thus producing the propositional function "x is warm" instead of a definite proposition. By quantifying the function by (x), meaning "For every x . . . ," or by (x), meaning "There is an x such that . . . ," it is transformed into a proposition again, either general or particular instead of singular, which predicates warmness (or its negation) of several or many subjects of a kind. The predication is identical if it characterizes every referent (x); it is disparate if it fails to characterize some or all of the referents. The predication is formal if the subject necessarily entails (or excludes) the predicate; it is material if the entailment is contingent

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