Non-Verbal Predication: Copular sentences at the syntax-semantics interface

✍ Scribed by Isabelle A. Roy

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 229
• Series: Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book considers the syntax and semantics of non-verbal predicates (i.e., nominal, adjectival and prepositional predicates) in copular sentences. Isabelle Roy explores how a single structure for predication can account for the different interpretations of non-verbal predicates. The book departs from earlier studies by arguing in favor of a ternary distinction between defining / characterizing / situation-descriptive predicates rather than the more common stage-level/individual distinction. The distinction is based on two semantic criteria, namely maximality (i.e., whether the predicate describes an eventuality that has spatio-temporal properties or not) and density (i.e. whether the spatio-temporal properties are perceived as atomic or not). The author argues in favor of a strong correlation between the semantics properties of predicates and their internal syntactic structure. Her analysis accounts for seemingly unrelated cross-linguistic data: the indefinite article in French, the distribution of the two copulas 'ser'/'estar' in Spanish, and case marking on Russian predicates.

✦ Subjects

Языки и языкознание;Лингвистика;Синтаксис;