A 'predicative verb' is a verb that behaves as a grammatical
adjective, that is, it predicates (qualifies or informs about the properties of its argument). It is a special kind of
stative verb.
Many languages do not use the present forms of the verb "to be" to separate an adjective from its noun: instead, these forms of the verb "to be" are understood as part of the adjective.
Egyptian uses this structure: "my mouth is red" is written as /dSr=f r=i/ (dSr=f "(it is) red", r=i "my mouth"). Other languages to use this structure include the
Northwest Caucasian languages, the
East Slavic languages, the
Semitic languages, some
Nilotic languages and the
Athabaskan languages.
In the
Akkadian languages, the "predicative" (also called the "permansive" or "stative") is a set of pronominal inflections used to convert noun stems into effective sentences, so that the form ''šarrāku'' is a single word more or less equivalent to either of the sentences ''šarrum anāku'' "I am king" or ''šarratum anāku'' "I am queen".