Clausal structure and the Modern Irish copula

Abstract

This paper investigates the syntax of a class of copular sentences in Modern Irish which have posed a longstanding problem in that they differ from other finite clauses in the language in word order and other significant syntactic properties. The paper argues that the ‘copula’ in question is a non-lexical category, a functional head of the inflectional class. This conclusion forms the basis for an analysis of the major syntactic anomalies of the construction which makes no recourse to language-specific phrase structure rules. A significant property of the proposed analysis is that it is not reconcilable with the common background assumption that functional heads are limited to one category of complement (Abney 1987, Grimshaw 1991): the Irish copula is one documented example of a functional head which admits a wide range of categories in its complement. Furthermore, the paper argues that the traditional observation that these sentences admit only predicates expressive of a permanent property can be profitably re-interpreted in terms of the individual-level/stage-level distinction (Carlson 1977, Kratzer 1989).