Secondly, a typical function of an adjective is predicative. You can
utter “The stove is hot” as a warning. Linguistically, the adjective is
then a complement to a copula (“is”) or an intransitive verb (“the meal
tastes wonderful”). The specifi cation function and the predicative function
may very well be cognitively separated. Therefore, it is not obvious
that these functions should be expressed by only one word class. Dixon
(2004: 30) notes that some languages indeed have two different word
classes, one fulfi lling the fi rst function and another fulfi lling the second.
Actually, some words classifi ed as adjectives in English only have
one of the functions: Afraid and alive can only be used predicatively
and absolute and main can only be used as specifi cations (attributively)
(Paradis 2005). The specifi cation function can also be fulfi lled by a
noun. For example “The silk scarf” can be used to distinguish among
several scarves.
7. Verbs
In linguistics, the semantic role of verbs has been described as predication
(for example, Croft 2001). However, the notion of predication is
rather abstract—it derives from the Fregean view of language—and it
does not capture the communicative role of verbs. Also within philosophy,
there is recent criticism of the general use of predication (see e.g.