Non-verbal Predication in the World’s Languages
The notion of predication is usually associated with the lexical class of verbs. However, the predicate function may also be expressed by Noun / Adjective / Adverb / Quantifier Phrases:
a. John is a doctor. b. The man is old. c. The boys are in the garden. d. Sam's friends are many.
Natural languages do, with respect to non-verbal predication, what they are expected to do in any compartment of grammar: they sharply diverge in their behavior.
This book offers a wide typological overview of how languages deal with non-verbal predication (henceforth: NVP). After the pioneering works by Hengeveld (1992) and Stassen (1997), no other work has attempted to provide a comprehensive overview of this pervasive syntactic phenomenon. Hence, the need for this book.
The introductory chapter highlights the main features to be considered:
- the lexical and morphosyntactic nature of the predicate.
- the morphological expression of NVP.
- the semantic types of NVP.
The bulk of the book consists of a collection of papers, written by well-known specialists, targeting different languages or language families, thus offering a rich array of typological data.
This book will be of interest to typologists, syntacticians of any theoretical creed, and students of linguistics at large.