Overview

This book considers the syntax and semantics of non-verbal predicates (i.e., nominal, adjectival and prepositional predicates) in copular sentences. Isabelle Roy explores how a single structure for predication can account for the different interpretations of non-verbal predicates. The book departs from earlier studies by arguing in favor of a ternary distinction between defining / characterizing / situation-descriptive predicates rather than the more common stage-level/individual distinction. The distinction is based on two semantic criteria, namely maximality (i.e., whether the predicate describes an eventuality that has spatio-temporal properties or not) and density (i.e. whether the spatio-temporal properties are perceived as atomic or not). The author argues in favor of a strong correlation between the semantics properties of predicates and their internal syntactic structure. Her analysis accounts for seemingly unrelated cross-linguistic data: the indefinite article in French, the distribution of the two copulas 'ser'/'estar' in Spanish, and case marking on Russian predicates.

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9780199543540

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Its (the book) fairly comprehensive scope and the overall good balance between technical detail and accessibility make it an important reference source not only for specialists but also for students. Journal of Linguistic

Its (the book) fairly comprehensive scope and the overall good balance between technical detail and accessibility make it an important reference source not only for specialists but also for students. * Journal of Linguistic * This monograph tackles a very difficult topic, predicative copular sentences, in such a way as to make longstanding linguistic problems look fairly straightforward ... well-designed, carefully organized, and thorough. * Lorie Heggie, Linguist List *

Author Information

Isabelle Roy is an Associate Professor at the Unversity of Paris 8. She received her PhD from the University of Southern California in 2006.

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