The geometry of predication: a configurational derivation of the defining property of clause structure

Predication is the fundamental grammatical relation defining clausal structures in all (and only) human languages. This notion is by definition compositional, since it consists of a link between a subject and a predicate. The central question addressed here is whether this traditional notion, which has never been dismissed ever since the canonical models of Ancient Greek linguistics, can be derived at a formal level from more abstract compositional algorithms. Capitalizing on predication in copular sentences, which allow factoring out non-essential aspects of this phenomenon, such as the morphological asymmetry between verbs and nouns, I propose a configurational approach to predication. This new approach is based on the notion of symmetry as derived by purely compositional mechanisms. Finally, I address some theoretical and empirical consequences of this generalization including those pertaining to neurolinguistics. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Towards mechanistic models of meaning composition’.