Predicates and Their Subjects

✍ Scribed by Susan Rothstein (auth.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 360
• Series: Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy 74
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Predicates and their Subjects is an in-depth study of the syntax-semantics interface focusing on the structure of the subject-predicate relation. Starting from where the author's 1983 dissertation left off, the book argues that there is syntactic constraint that clauses (small and tensed) are constructed out of a one-place unsaturated expression, the predicate, which must be applied to a syntactic argument, its subject. The author shows that this predication relation cannot be reduced to a thematic relation or a projection of argument structure, but must be a purely syntactic constraint. Chapters in the book show how the syntactic predication relation is semantically interpreted, and how the predication relation explains constraints on DP-raising and on the distribution of pleonastics in English. The second half of the book extends the theory of predication to cover copular constructions; it includes an account of the structure of small clauses in Hebrew, of the use of `be' in predicative and identity sentences in English, and concludes with a study of the meaning of the verb `be'.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xv
Why ‘Subject’ is a Grammatical Concept....Pages 1-31
Front Matter....Pages 33-33
The Grammatical Theory of Predication....Pages 35-65
The Syntactic Properties of Subjects....Pages 66-83
Predication as a Thematic Relation....Pages 84-99
The Syntactic Forms of Predication....Pages 100-129
Front Matter....Pages 131-131
Interpretation....Pages 133-167
The Semantics of Pleonastics....Pages 168-202
Front Matter....Pages 203-203
Predication Structures In Modern Hebrew Identity Constructions....Pages 205-234
Copular Constructions in English....Pages 235-270
Front Matter....Pages 271-271
The Meaning of ‘be’....Pages 273-338
Back Matter....Pages 339-352

✦ Subjects

Semantics; Syntax; Philosophy of Language