Copular Clauses: Specification, Predication And Equation (Linguistik Aktuell Linguistics Today)

221 Pages·2005·0.97 MB·English

by  Line Mikkelsen

<DOCINFOAUTHOR""TITLE"CopularClauses:Specification,predicationandequation"SUBJECT"LinguistikAktuell/LinguisticsToday,Volume85"KEYWORDS""SIZEHEIGHT"240"WIDTH"160"VOFFSET"4">
CopularClauses
LinguistikAktuell/LinguisticsToday
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Volume85
CopularClauses:Specification,predicationandequation
byLineMikkelsen
Copular Clauses
Specification, predication and equation
Line Mikkelsen
UniversityofCalifornia,Berkeley
JohnBenjaminsPublishingCompany
Amsterdam(cid:1)/(cid:1)Philadelphia
TM Thepaperusedinthispublicationmeetstheminimumrequirements
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LineMikkelsen
CopularClauses:Specification,predicationandequation/ Line
Mikkelsen.
p. cm.(LinguistikAktuell/LinguisticsToday,issn0166–0829;v.85)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindexes.
1.Grammar,Comparativeandgeneral--Clauses.2.Grammar,
Comparativeandgeneral--Syntax.3.Grammar,Comparativeandgeneral-
-Verbphrase.I.Title.II.Series:Linguistikaktuell;Bd.85.
P297.M48 2005
415--dc22 2005054553
isbn9027228094(Hb;alk.paper)
©2005–JohnBenjaminsB.V.
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CONTENTS
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
I STRUCTURE 4
2 Predicatetopicalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2 PredicatetopicalizationinDanish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.3 Predicatetopicalizationvs.specification . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.4 Takingstock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.5 Furtherevidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3 Alternativestructuresforspecificationalclauses . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.1 Predicateraising. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.2 Subjectraisingfromsymmetricsmallclause . . . . . . . . . 43
3.3 “Transitive”structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
II MEANING 46
4 Decomposingcopularclauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4.1 Synopsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4.2 Partee’stheoryofnounphraseinterpretation . . . . . . . . . 53
4.3 Methodologicalissues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.4 Consequencesforthelivesyntacticoptions . . . . . . . . . 58
4.5 Twoalternativesemanticanalyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.6 Whatistocome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5 Determiningthesubjecttype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
5.1 Pronominalizationasatestforsemantictype . . . . . . . . 65
5.2 Threeenvironments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
5.3 FurtherevidencefromDanish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
vi COPULARCLAUSES
5.4 Looseends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
6 Thetypeofthepredicatecomplement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
6.2 Possiblepredicatecomplements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
6.3 VPellipsisasatestforsemantictype . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
7 Consequencesandextensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
7.1 Possiblespecificationalsubjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
7.2 Truncatedclefts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
III USE 131
8 Aspectsofuse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
8.1 Topic–focusstructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
8.2 Inversionstructures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
8.3 Thediscoursefunctionofinversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
8.4 Discourse-familiarityandtopic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
9 Anintegratedanalysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
9.1 Whereweare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
9.2 AMinimalistanalysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
9.3 Interpretingthestructures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
10 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thisbookisarevisedversionofmy2004UCSantaCruzdissertationSpecifying
Who: On the structure, meaning, and use of specificational copular clauses. I
remain deeply grateful to the people who guided me through the dissertation
writingprocess,especiallythemembersofmycommittee:JudithAissen,Donka
Farkas,BillLadusaw,andJimMcCloskey(Chair),andmyofficemateformost
it,ChrisPotts.
I also thank my colleagues and students at UC Berkeley, the Linguistik Ak-
tuell series editors Werner Abraham and Elly van Geldern, John Benjamins ed-
itorKeesVaes,mywonderfulcopyeditorTamiSchyuler,MichaelHouser,who
proofreadthemanuscriptinshortorder,andMichaelandMelodyCovingtonof
CovingtonInnovations,whocreatedtheLATEXstylefileusedtotypesetthisbook.
As will be clear to the reader, this book builds in numerous ways on Roger
Higgins’sworkoncopularclauses.Ithankhimformakinghisunpublishedand
out-of-print work available to me and for encouraging me in my work on the
topic.
Inthemostdelightfulway,BettyBirnerandGregoryWardhelpedmeunder-
stand the strengths and weaknesses of the analysis of truncated clefts I propose
in chapter 7. My daily interaction with Lotus Goldberg over the past year has
also been a source of joy and inspiration. Finally, and there is no adequate way
todothis,IthankPD.
LineMikkelsen
Berkeley,June2005

CHAPTER1
INTRODUCTION
Thisbookisconcernedwithcopularclauses,inparticularcopularclausesofthe
kindshownin(1.1).
(1.1) TheleadactressinthatmovieisIngridBergman.
InHiggins’s(1979)taxonomyofcopularclausestheseareknownas‘specifica-
tional’ clauses, and distinguished from other kinds of copular clause, ‘predica-
tional’and‘equative’clausesinparticular.1
(1.2) IngridBergmanistheleadactressinthatmovie. [predicational]
(1.3) SheisIngridBergman [equative]
Informally, specificational clauses can be distinguished from predicational and
equative clauses in the following way. Predicational clauses are similar to non-
copular clauses like (1.4) in that the VP expresses a property (being the lead
actress in a certain movie, having run a marathon within a certain amount of
time)whichisassertedtoholdoftheindividualdenotedbythesubject:
(1.4) Chrisranamarathonin3hoursand27minutes.
Predicational clauses, along with non-copular clauses like (1.4), thus tell us
something about the referent of the subject. In contrast, Higgins argues, the
VP of a specificational clause does not predicate a property of the subject ref-
erent; rather, the subject introduces a variable (in (1.1) the x such that x is the
lead actress in that movie), and the post-copular expression serves to provide a
valueforthatvariable(Higgins1979:153ff,234ff;seealsoAkmajian1979:19ff).
ParaphrasingAkmajian(1979:162–165),wecansaythataspecificationalclause
does not tell us something about the referent of the subject NP, instead it says
whoorwhatthereferentis.
1Higgins(1979)usestheterm‘identity’clauseforexampleslike(1.3).Theterm‘equative’is
morecommoninthesubsequentlinguisticliterature,includingtheworksdiscussedbelow.Iuse
thetwotermsinterchangeablythroughout.FurthernotethatwhileHigginscapitalizestheinitial
letterofthenamesofthefourkindsofcopularclauses,Iusealllowercase.