Predicational language allows the child or learner to talk about events located outside of the here and now, about feelings, and about abstract, hypothetical, or imagined arguments and states of affairs.

It would make little difference to most of us now whether the Duchess of Portland or her stand-in had posed—except that both might be lacking in any abstract quality of ‘Duchessnesss’.

You paid how much for that piece of junk? You need your head examined!

It cannot be accidental that within the timar system the proportion of holdings controlled by the ümera and the ordinary sipahis shifted to the benefit of the former. Whereas around 1527–8, 19% of the total income from timars had been in the hands of beylerbeyis and sancakbeyis, in the 1580s the corresponding figure was 29%.