This refers to sentences like "Socrates is wise, " that attribute a particular quality or characteristic to a subject. It is clear that this notion of predication lies closest to the conception of the Processant function identified by AIT.

The main difference lies within the emphasis placed by AIT upon Extantal Imbuancy, and its linking of the function of the 'be' conjugation to this linguistic phenomenon. Thus a predicate can be seen as a separable mode of existence of the subject, which means the attribution of a quality or characteristic in such a way that the attribution itself becomes that which allows a statement to have truth or falsehood. In other words, the utterance "The tall man" is no different from the sentence "The man is tall" in terms of the qualities attributed to it. The difference lies within the fact that the *is* here allows the quality of *tallness* to be separable from *The man. * This mode of existence is exhibited in such a way that it can be examined and hence challenged.

It seems that the standard notion of *predication* is strongly linked to that of the *copula. * But from the above example it can be seen that the so-called *copuletic function* is inferred from the fact that where a predicate is displayed as a quality of the subject, it can be effectively challenged as to whether it does indeed pertain to the subject. Thus it is assumed that the possibility of this disjunction arises out of a previous
*conjoining* of the predicate to the subject. Yet since this quality stated in the predicate can equally be stated as part of the subject, in such a way as not to allow its disjunction, the notion of *joining* is at best misleading.

The notion of Extantal Imbuancy allows this to be made clearer, since "The tall man" announces the existence of this particular entity as an inseparable whole, whereas "The man is tall" allows the announcement of the same entity in terms of separable, and thus challengeable, elements. We can then *test* this proposition, as to whether 'tall' does indeed correspond to 'the man, ' but only because this has been initiated into a separable pertaining correspondence by the *is. * Without the *is* there would be no predicate to *join* onto the subject.

Thus the *is* here allows modes of existence to be displayed in terms of a possible correspondence wherein, the predicate pertains to the subject. It should of course be noted that there are in fact two types of
*correspondence* simultaneously at work here. The first we can call
*semantic correspondence. * Where someone points to a dog and says *cat, * there is no semantic correspondence between the referent and the standard usage of this particular word. The question of semantic correspondence does not of course arise where the referent is not physically present, which is precisely the case where the referent is made manifest through Extantal Imbuance. Nevertheless, it is the distinction between the actually perceived referent and that which is extantally imbued which allows semantic non-correspondence to be made manifest.

The second type of correspondence, which we can call *propositional correspondence, * is directly attributable to the Processant function. Here, the semantic reference of the predicate is separated from that of the subject in order to be related back to it. This propositional correspondence itself depends upon a semantic correspondence between the predicate and a particular aspect of the entity to which the subject refers.

If both these semantic correspondences hold, then the proposition itself can be said to be true. Thus the Processant allows correspondence/non-correspondence to be introduced into the formal structure of language, in a way that goes beyond the correct/incorrect use of words upon which semantic correspondence alone depends.

AND ANOTHER THING: Within the notion of "the *is* of predication, " logic emphasises a distinction between *first-order predication, * where the eligible subject phrase has the certain function of referring to something or someone, as in the sentence "Socrates is wise, " and *second-order predication, * as in the sentence "Wisdom is rare. " This is in many ways similar to the AIT notion of the Reificant although, again, it fails to place the way in which the distinction between *first order* and *second order* predication relates directly to the question of the instantiation of existence that is given in the subject, such that with *second order predication* a mode of existence is itself instantiated into having a *free standing* existence by the structure of the sentence.

As with the more general notion of predication, it is the relation of the Imbunant to the Processant function that is crucial here. The AIT analysis allows this distinction to be seen in terms of the structure of utterance, as opposed to attempting to untangle it by means of the semantic (reference) distinction it allows.