Predication

Some sentences have a very simple structure, consisting only of a part

which serves to pick out a particular object and a part which says
something about the object picked out. Expressions which can be used
to say something about objects picked out are called predicates. Thus
smokes in Sam smokes is a predicate. But predication may refer
either to the activity of predicating or to what is predicated. To
understand either we need to know what predicates are and how they
combine with other expressions.
Predicates, unlike proper names, can be negated. They combine with
other expressions in ways described by categorial grammar: predicates
are incomplete and are completed by other expressions, such as proper
names. The word smokes in Sam smokes is called a monadic or 1place predicate; predicates
with two or more places are called relational predicates (Sam loves
Erna, 3 is between 2 and 4).
Since Frege it has been customary to hold that the incomplete or
predicative parts of Sam smokes and Sam is a smoker are,
respectively, smokes and is a smoker (see Frege, G. 2-4). According
to an older view, the incomplete part of Sam is a smoker is the copula
is, which is completed by two complete expressions, Sam and a
smoker (a can be ignored as an accident of English). Sometimes called
the two name theory of predication, this view allows two types of name
- proper names and common nouns.
Is predication merely a matter of words? Are mental acts or the senses
of words essential to it? For Frege, names and predicates are correlated
with ideal senses, and the sentential wholes to which they belong with
ideal thoughts or propositions (see Sense and reference 2; Frege

1892a). The sense or meaning of a proper name is sometimes called an

individual concept, that of a predicate a concept (Frege himself used
neither concept nor meaning in this way). It has been held that to use
a predicate is to perform a mental act of predicating and that to use a
proper name is to perform a mental act of naming or referring. Husserl
and others appeal to both senses and mental acts and conceive of the
latter as tokenings of the former. The unity of thoughts and of thinkings,
on these views, resembles but is prior to the unity of the sentence:
predicative senses require non-predicative senses; predicat
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.1, London and New
York: Routledge (1999)