This study examines the copy raising constructions in Chinese and proposes an integrated analysis built on the insights of the prominent proposals from recent years. It argues that the matrix subject in Chinese copy raising is base-generated and requires a coindexed copy in the complement. Though concurring with Landau’s (2011) predication theory that recognizes theta assignment and predication as two ways of semantically licensing an argument, this squib differs from him in assuming that languages like Chinese can be parametrized in not treating the perceptual source as thematic. It is further argued that in Chinese, the perceptual source construal of the subject does not come from theta assignment but rather as an implicature which interprets the matrix subject to be involved in the topic event denoted by the perception verb.

Recently, Indrek Reiland proposed a new version of the act-type theory of propositions (ATT) in which predication is still committal. However, the Frege-Geach problem can be addressed without resorting to Peter Hanks's cancellation manoeuvre. In this article, I argue that if we take predication as a committal act, we will then have to tackle another problem: non-committal representational acts. I argue that Reiland still needs a notion of cancellation to deal with the latter problem. On this account, he cannot avoid the major flaw he attributes to Hanks's version.

This paper defends an interpretation of Plato, Soph. 259c7–d7, which describes a distinction between genuine and pretender forms of ‘examination’ or ‘refutation’ (ἔλεγχος). The passage speaks to a need, throughout the dialogue, to differentiate the truly philosophical method from the merely eristic method. But its contribution has been obscured by the appearance of a textual problem at 259c7–8. As a result, scholars have largely not recognized that the Eleatic Stranger recommends accepting contrary predication as a condition of genuine refutation. After reviewing various proposals to change the text, the paper defends this reading. Finally, the paper turns to the methodological significance of accepting contrary predication. The dialogue depicts contrary predication as an instance of a class of statements that compel the soul's disbelief. Soph. 259c7–d7 suggests that these kinds of statements are a crossroad: one can either reject them and turn to eristic discourse or accept them and practise genuine refutation. The paper reflects on what this indicates about Plato's meditations on contradiction and philosophy.

I provide a syntactic analysis of the take-time construction (It took an hour to complete the test). The investigation provides insight into well-known issues concerning the related tough-construction. Using a battery of standard syntactic diagnostics, I conclude that the take-time construction and the tough-construction require a predication analysis of the antecedent-gap chain, not a movement analysis. I also conclude that the nonfinite clause is in a modificational relationship with the main clause predicate, not a selectional relationship. Broadly, this study expands the class of tough-constructions, illustrating crucial variation among predicates, and pointing the way to a unified analysis. The investigation also reveals undiscussed aspects of English syntax, including the fact that English has a high applicative position.

Sentences like They tricked him into believing them and They charged him with abandoning them raise interesting issues for selection and control. We show that these two sentences exemplify two distinct classes, subsuming P-gerund constructions that are formed with seven distinct prepositions: implicative vs. nonimplicative constructions. The first class displays a cluster of restrictions, both syntactic and semantic, which are absent from the second class: It resists partial control or embedded lexical subjects, and it bans object drop and movement of the P-gerund phrase. The existence of these two classes, as well as their empirical profiles, follow from Landau’s (2015) theory of control and challenge alternative approaches.

I propose a comprehensive analysis of what has been commonly referred in the literature to as split, discontinuous noun phrases or split topicalization. Based on data from Basaá, a Narrow Bantu language spoken in Cameroon, I partly capitalize on previous authors such as Mathieu (2004), Mathieu & Sitaridou (2005) and Ott (2015a), who propose that this morphosyntactic phenomenon involves two syntactically unrelated constituents which are only linked semantically in a predication relation in a small clause (Moro 1997, 2000; Den Dikken 1998). According to these analyses, split noun phrases are obtained as a result of predicate inversion across the subject of the small clause. Contrary to/but not against these views, I suggest that what raises in the same context in Basaá is rather the subject of the small clause as a consequence of feature-checking under closest c-command (Chomsky 2000, 2001), and for the purpose of labelling and asymmetrizing an originally symmetric syntactic structure on the surface (Ott 2015a and related work). The fact that the target of movement is the subject and not the predicate of the small clause follows from agreement and ellipsis factors. Given that the subject of predication is a full DP while the predicate is a reduced DP with a null head modifier, the surface word order is attributed to the fact that noun/noun phrase ellipsis is possible if the elided noun is given in the discourse and is recoverable from the morphology of the stranded modifier. This paper offers a theoretical contribution from an understudied language to our understanding of this puzzling nominal construction.

According to the traditional account of propositional content, propositions are the primary bearers of truth. Here I argue that acts of predication are the primary bearers of truth. Propositions are types of these actions, and they inherit their truth-conditions from their tokens. Against this, many philosophers think that it is a category mistake to say that actions are true or false. Furthermore, even if we grant that token acts of predication have truth-conditions, there are reasons for doubting that types of these actions also have truth-conditions. I respond to these objections in this paper. I also clarify what it means for propositions to inherit truth-conditions from token acts of predication.

The paper builds upon familiar arguments against identifying the proposition that Brutus stabbed Caesar with a given sequence containing Brutus, Caesar, and the stabs relation. It identifies a further problem, one that affects not only traditional Russellian accounts of propositions, but also the recent act-theoretic approach championed by Scott Soames and Peter Hanks. The problem is that there is no clear content to the idea that the pair  < Brutus, Caesar> instantiates the stabs relation. It is argued that this further problem presents a decisive objection to the act-theoretic approach to propositions.

This paper develops a generalization about agreement in German copula constructions described in Coon et al. (2017), and proposes an analysis that ties it to other well-established hierarchy phenomena. Specifically, we show that “assumed-identity” copula constructions in German exibit both person and number hierarchy effects, and that these extend beyond the “non-canonical” or “inverse” agreement patterns described in previous work on copula constructions (e.g., Béjar and Kahnemuyipour 2017 and works cited there). We present experimental evidence to support this generalization, and then develop an account that unifies it with hierarchy phenomena in other languages, with a focus on PCC effects. Specifically, we propose that what German copula constructions have in common with PCC environments is that there are multiple accessible DPs in the domain of a single agreement probe, the lower of which is more featurally specified than the higher (see, e.g., Béjar and Rezac 2003, 2009; Anagnostopoulou 2005; Nevins 2007). We also offer an explanation as to why number effects are present in German copula constructions but notably absent in PCC effects. We then place our account within the broader context of constraints on predication structures.

I offer an analysis of the sentence ‘the concept horse is a concept’. It will be argued that the grammatical subject of this sentence, ‘the concept horse’, indeed refers to a concept, and not to an object, as Frege once held. The argument is based on a criterion of proper-namehood according to which an expression is a proper name if it is so rendered in Frege’s ideography. The predicate ‘is a concept’, on the other hand, should not be thought of as referring to a function. It will be argued that the analysis of sentences of the form ‘C is a concept’ requires the introduction of a new form of statement. Such statements are not to be thought of as having function–argument form, but rather the structure subject–copula–predicate.

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 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.

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.