The Grammar of Copulas Across Languages

✍ Scribed by Maria J. Arche (editor), Antonio Fabregas (editor), Rafael Marin (editor)

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 305
• Series: Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 73
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This volume presents a crosslinguistic survey of the current theoretical debates around copular constructions from a generative perspective. Following an introduction to the main questions surrounding the analysis and categorization of copulas, the chapters address a range of key topics including the existence of more than one copular form in certain languages, the factors determining the presence or absence of a copula, and the morphology of copular forms. The team of expert contributors present new theoretical proposals regarding the formal mechanisms behind the behaviour and patterns observed in copulas in a wide range of typologically diverse languages, including Czech, French, Korean, and languages from the Dene and Bantu families. Their findings have implications beyond the study of copulas and shed more light on issues such as agreement relations, the nature of grammatical categories, and nominal predicates in syntax and semantics.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
General preface
List of abbreviations
The contributors
1. Main questions in the study of copulas: Categories, structures, and operations • María J. Arche, Antonio Fábregas, and Rafael Marín
2. Copulas and light verbs as spellouts of argument structure: Evidence from Dene languages • Nicholas Welch
3. The support copula in the left periphery • Teresa O’Neill
4. The copula as a nominative Case marker • Kwang-sup Kim
5. Number matching in binominal small clauses • Susana Bejar, Jessica Denniss, Arsalan Kahnemuyipour, and Tomohiro Yokoyama
6. Agreement with the post-verbal DP in Polish dual copula clauses • Anna Bondaruk
7. On PERSON, animacy, and copular agreement in Czech • Jitka Bartošová and Ivona Kučerová
8. Aspects of the syntax of ce in French copular sentences • Isabelle Roy and Ur Shlonsky
9. The role of the copula in periphrastic passives in Russian • Olga Borik
10. The copula in certain Caribbean Spanish focus constructions • Luis Sáez
11. Variation in Bantu copula constructions • Hannah Gibson, Rozenn Guérois, and Lutz Marten
12. Predicational and specificational copular sentences in Logoori • Nicoletta Loccioni
References
Index of Terms and Languages