The predication may be understood in terms of the two basic acts of “referring” and “predicating” […]. Referring means pinpointing some entity about which something is to be predicated; predicating means assigning properties and relations to such entities. In accordance with our general view of verbal interaction, referring will here be interpreted as a pragmatic, cooperative action of a Speaker in a pattern of communication between Speaker and Addressee, according to the model: (1) S refers A to E by means of T where T is some term, and E some entity.
- Dik (1989), a pag.111