Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistic Nonverbal Predication: Copular Sentences at the Syntax-Semantics Interface (Hardcover)

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.