(1) Just as the part of a proposition that precedes the copula is called the “subject”, so [too] the part of a proposition that follows the copula is the “predicate”. Yet some [people] want to say that the predicate is the copula together with what follows it. But, because this controversy depends on the signification of the word [‘predicate’], which is a matter of the user’s conventions, therefore I pass over it now.
(2) However ‘predicate’ is said,1 it is taken in many senses. In one sense, everything that is the one extreme of a proposition and is not the subject [is called the “predicate”]. In this sense, every term that can be predicated in a true or false proposition can be a predicate.
(3) In another sense, ‘predicate’ is taken [for] what is predicated in a true proposition in which there is direct predication.2 In this sense, ‘animal’ is a predicate with respect to ‘man’, but not with respect to ‘stone’.
(4) In a third sense, what is predicated of some subject by direct predication, of which subject there can be science properly so called, is called a “predicate”. The Philosopher takes ‘predicate’ in this sense in Topics I,3 where he distinguishes four [kinds of] predicates, namely genus, definition, property and accident (and includes difference under genus). Species is not counted here because, although a species is predicated of individuals, nevertheless because individuals cannot be the subjects in propositions known by science properly so called, therefore species is not counted among such predicates.
(5) Now the verb that joins the predicate with the subject is called the “copula”.
Translation by Paul Vincent Spade, CC BY 4.0. Source: Indiana University ScholarWorks. Changes: format conversion only (PDF to Markdown; footnotes, italics and paragraph numbers kept; margin line numbers and page headers dropped).
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