2003/07/01 by David Adger, Gillian Ramchand · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Linguistics and language evolution
paper · doi:10.1162/002438903322247515
openalex publication_date 2003/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
In this article, we argue that a structural distinction between predicational and equative copular clauses is illusory. All semantic predicational relationships are constructed asymmetrically via a syntactic predicational head; differences reduce to whether this head bears an event variable or not. This allows us to maintain a restrictive view of the syntax-semantics interface in the face of apparently recalcitrant data from Scottish Gaelic.