This article aims to account for why verbless sentences in Standard Arabic lack a copular verb. In contrast to previous accounts which attribute the absence of the copula to some defect of present tense, I claim that a verbless sentence does not take a copula because its nominais do not need structural Case. The proposed analysis argues that structural Case is licensed by a “Verbal Case” feature on the relevant Case-checking heads, and assumes the Visibility Condition. The present analysis is based on a unique interaction between tense and word order, and on the observation that verbless sentences are finite clauses composed of a topic and a predicate, as well as on the observation that they do not involve licensing of structural Case.

This issue addresses questions surrounding predication. Predication is typically defined as making a claim or statement — that is, saying something that is truth-evaluable. The canonical manner of achieving predication would appear to be the sentence, made up of a noun phrase (NP), e.g., [Np Sandy] and a verb phrase (VP), e.g., [vp plays the fiddle].

Two central questions arise concerning this basic view of predication. The first has to do with what varieties predication comes in. The second is about various ways of achieving predication.

The central claim of this article is that the D(avidsonian)-state vs. K(imian)-state distinction established for German and Spanish by Maienborn is of wider crosslinguistic relevance. Stage-level and individual-level secondary predicates are both viewed here as K-states as they contain only a Kimian temporal variable but no Davidsonian event variable. Secondary predicates expressing a K-state may acquire the temporary/actual property interpretation when an alternative state entailment is added to them. In such cases the functional layer of the BE-predicate contains a syntactic operator (OPalt) that can bind the Kimian temporal variable in accessible worlds. If no such entailment is added, the same temporal variable is bound by the T0 functional head of the BE-predicate in the actual world. The auxiliary tá/bhí ‘be’ in Irish imposes the semantic restriction that its secondary predicate must contain the alternative state entailment. The copula is/ba ‘be’, on the other hand, is used in the absence of such an entailment. Case obviation on the secondary predicate head in Russian copular sentences signals alternative state entailment, while case agreement on the secondary predicate appears in the absence of this entailment.

The Turkic language Sakha (Yakut) uses a copular verb with predicate nominals but not with predicate adjectives or verbs in certain environments, including relative clauses, nominalized clauses, and complements to nouns. Previous work takes this as evidence that adjectives but not nouns are true one-place predicates. However, unaccusativity diagnostics show that adjectives pattern with nouns in Sakha, as in other languages: neither is inherently predicative without a predicative functional head. The need for a copula with predicate nominais in certain environments can be explained using Richards’s distinctiveness condition. Relative clauses, noun complements, and nominalization structures all bring a nominal head in close contact with the predicate. If the predicate itself is nominal, a verbal copula must intervene to separate the predicate from the embedding head of the same category.

This article investigates whether Tenetehára is a predicate-raising language. The purpose is to determine whether VSO order results from verb movement to the heads T0 or C0 only, or whether Tenetehára exhibits VP remnant movement, similarly to languages like Niuean, Choi, Malagasy, and Seediq. The analysis concludes that Tenetehára does allow predicate movement, to Spec-CP or Spec-TP. Either option depends on particles related to tense and complementation, in sentence-final position. Additionally, assuming Kayne’s antisymmetry theory, in which all movement occurs to the left, and the predicate-raising hypothesis, it is proposed that final tense particle orders are derived from the basic word order [Tense [SVO]]. To derive the fact that T0 can be head-final, the analysis holds that the predicate, represented by the v-VP complex, must move to the specifier position of TP. Finally, it is proposed that the syntactic trigger for predicate-raising is the presence of a [+PRED] feature both in the head C0 and in the head T0, a fact that explains why Tenetehára grammar systematically strands tense and complementizer particles in clause-final position.

This study investigates temporal and control interpretations with verbs of risk followed by non-finite complements in English. It addresses two questions: Why does the gerund-participle show variation in the temporal relation between the event it denotes and that of the main verb whereas the to-infinitive manifests a constant temporal relation? Why does the gerund-participle construction allow variation in control while the to-infinitive shows constant subject control readings? The study is based on a corpus of 1345 attested uses. The explanation is framed in a natural-language semantics involving the meanings of the gerund-participle, the infinitive, the preposition to, and the meaning-relation between the matrix and its complement. Temporal and control interpretations are shown to arise as implications grounded in the semantic content of what is linguistically expressed. It is argued that the capacity of a natural-language semantic approach to account for the data obviates the need to have recourse to purely syntactic operations to account for control.

This study investigates two concurrent phenomena— ’imala and rounding — in the Arabic variety spoken in the Syrian village of Oyoun Al-Wadi. ‘Imala refers to the use of [e] and [e:] in place of the urban vowels [a] and [a:] respectively; rounding refers to the use of [o] and [o:] in place of the urban vowels [a] and [a:] respectively. The use of two different vowels for each urban vowel is explained morpho-phonologically. The study economically proposes two phonological rules to account for ‘imala and rounding and shows that only one rule can apply per word, to the final syllable of a word. In light of Lexical Phonology theory, certain morphological patterns and suffixes explain the presence of ‘imala in initial syllables and in environments that induce rounding. That is, it is part of the lexical representation of a morphological pattern or suffix in the lexicon. Hence, ‘imala could occur in the initial syllable as part of the morphological pattern, and rounding could occur in the final syllable of the same word as a result of a post-lexical phonological rule.

This article presents new data from a number of Germanic languages concerning the agreement patterns found in copular clauses that contain two nominais; in both clauses with specificational readings (such as The problem is your parents) and those with what are here termed readings of assumed identity (such as If I were you or In my dream I was you). It is argued that the specificational sentences involve asymmetric equative structures where one nominal is interpreted as in a concealed question, and that the cross-linguistic differences in agreement patterns found in the languages considered follow from the copula lexicalizing either Tense or a lower head.

This article presents a case study of Czech that opens the possibility of unifying various second-position phenomena as instances of an interface condition on head extension. The condition requires a head to undergo at least two instances of merge within its phase. The core of the article explores properties of T0. It is shown that any merge (external or internal, merge of a head or a phrase) yields a well-formed structure. Since it does not matter to the requirement what category merges to T0, the condition must be stated as a general requirement on what category may be the root.

The aim of this article is twofold. First, based on passives in Japanese and Korean, it expands the domain of the applicative head (Appl) to include an argument in the structural subject position. These languages provide evidence for a new type of Appl, peripheral Appl, distinct from the well-known high Appl in Bantu: unlike high Appl, peripheral Appl is the highest argument-introducing head under T, and can merge above VoiceP. The recognition of peripheral Appl makes it possible to account for the cross-linguistic positional variation among affectee arguments. Second, the article provides articulated clause structures for passives in Japanese and Korean in terms of Appl. The applicative account proves to be successful in providing a unified account of Japanese possessive and non-possessive passives, and of Korean possessive passives and causatives.

This article addresses inversion in an inverse (VSO) language, Niuean, focusing on two issues. First, it has been proposed that in certain types of copular sentences, such as pseudo-cleft constructions (PCCs), the predicate rather than the subject may move into the specifier position of TP. This raises the question of PCCs in a language in which the predicate normally moves there. Such sentences might exhibit their normal inverse order or the inverse of this. The second issue is what constitutes the predicate in a PCC. The headless relative (and not the DP) is usually analyzed as the predicate because, in standard theories of predication, a referential nominal cannot be a predicate. However, in Niuean PCCs, the DP is usually analyzed as the predicate. I propose that it is in fact a reduced headless relative with a null predicate. It becomes clear that there is no special copular inversion: the inversion requirement is taken care of by the general predicate-fronting process. The analysis thus sheds new light on the general nature of copular inversion and allows Niuean PCCs to fall into the standard view of predication theory.

This article investigates exemplars of the transitive be perfect in Canadian English, such as I am done dinner and I am finished my homework. I report on an experimental study of acceptability judgments of this construction, given by speakers of Canadian English primarily recruited from the Calgary area. I claim that the construction [be done NP] is characterized by preference for the animacy of the subject, preference for definiteness of the direct object, open-endedness of the direct object slot, and limited variability of the participle. I conclude that [be done NP] is a partially schematic construction that is close to a “prefab”.

The main aim of this article is to describe the visual perception process of anticipatory rounding gestures in [iC(CCCC)y] sequences by considering the characteristics that contribute to their production (articulatory configurations, temporal data, and kinematic events). Productions of two French speakers were analyzed to obtain the data needed to interpret the results of a perception test composed of truncated visual sequences using the gating paradigm. The results indicate that the perceptually effective portion of the gesture usually begins when a significant velocity peak is observed. In contrast, if the sequence has no prominent velocity peak, the rounded vowel can be recognized only when the labial configurations are closer to the articulatory target. The results can be interpreted on the basis of general models for movement perception, in this case representational momentum.

This article discusses semantic theories of generic sentences that seek to tie their meaning closely to their use, rather than giving more traditional truth-conditional semantic treatments. It focuses on McConnell-Ginet’s recent work and defends truth-conditional approaches combined with a traditional semantics-pragmatics distinction.

“Simple generics” with bare plural subjects (e.g., dogs bark) predicate of a kind a property that the kind “inherits” from its individual members. But what does that inheritance amount to if it is not, like most dogs bark, based on how many individuals have the property. My conclusion: there is no determinate account of which (fundamentally individual-level) properties can be truly predicated of a kind: generics are not quantificational, and language users’ interests guide judgments on their truth-conditions. At the same time, even “canonical” predications of ordinary predicates of ordinary individuals are not so straightforward as they might appear. Generic claims about social groups show the indeterminacy of truth conditions for simple generics and the relation to stereotypes and sometimes conflicting interests.

This study investigates the development of wh-questions in French in a group of bilingual French-Dutch children. Fifteen children (aged 4 to 8, mean age 6;03, first exposure to French under age 4 for most of the children) participated in an elicited production task. Their results were compared to those of 4-year-old and 6-year-old monolingual children from a previous study. In order to examine possible influence from Dutch, two main hypotheses with contrasting predictions are proposed: structural overlap and derivational complexity. The results show that the bilingual children exhibited the same developmental course for wh-questions as their monolingual peers. The majority of responses involved wh-fronting without inversion, whereas wh-fronting with inversion, the only possible structure in Dutch, was not frequent. Therefore, the results do not provide clear evidence for influence from Dutch. Instead, they confirm that derivational complexity constrains the development of wh-questions in French.

Predication is widely considered to be a fundamental feature of human language and conceptual structure. This article offers a reassessment of the central role that predication plays within current theories of grammar, by calling into question the universality of predication and its nature as a primitive, irreducible notion. It proposes a new definition of predicate, as a complex emergent entity derived from the alignment of two independent elements of conceptual structure: thematic role assignment and headedness.