Definition of "predicate"

In the light of this observation, consider Number Agreement in a sentence like: (120) They seem to me [S — to be fools/✽a fool] Here, the Predicate Nominal fools agrees with the italicised NP they, in spite of the fact that (as we argued earlier) the two are contained in different Clauses at S-structure. How can this be? Under the NP MOVEMENT analysis of seem structures, sentences like (120) pose no problem; if we suppose that they originates in the — position as the subordinate Clause Subject, then we can say that the Predicate Nominal agrees with the underlying Subject of its Clause. How does they get from its underlying position as subordinate Clause Subject to its superficial position as main Clause Subject? By NP MOVEMENT, of course!

1988, Andrew Radford, chapter 8, in Transformational grammar: a first course, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, page 438

Thus, in (121) (a) persuade is clearly a three-place Predicate — that is, a Predicate which takes three Arguments: the first of these Arguments is the Subject NP John, the second is the Primary Object NP Mary, and the third is the Secondary Object S-bar [that she should resign]. By contrast, believe in (121) (b) is clearly a two-place Predicate (i.e. a Predicate which has two Arguments): its first Argument is the Subject NP John, and its second Argument is the Object S-bar [that Mary was innocent].

1988, Andrew Radford, chapter 6, in Transformational grammar: a first course, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, page 323

There was a character about Madame Defarge, from which one might have predicated that she did not often make mistakes against herself in any of the reckonings over which she presided.

1859, Charles Dickens, “The Wine-shop”, in A Tale of Two Cities, London: Chapman and Hall, […], book I (Recalled to Life), page 21

Of anyone else it would have been said that she was finding the afternoon rather dreary in the vast halls not of her forefathers: but of Miss Power it was unsafe to predicate so surely.

1880–1881, Thomas Hardy, chapter II, in A Laodicean; or, The Castle of the De Stancys. A Story of To-day. […], volume II, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, […], published 1881, book the third (De Stancy), page 59

The law is what constitutes both desire and the lack on which it is predicated.

1978, Michel Foucault, The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley (Penguin 1998, page 81)

This quality becomes real as a mental concept when it is predicated of all the objects possessing it (“quod de pluribus natum est praedicari”).

1911, Encyclopedia Britannica, Conceptualism