Copula Deletion Research Articles

‘To be’ or not ‘to be’: an analysis of copula production and omission in people with non-fluent aphasia

ABSTRACT Background Agrammatic aphasia has been widely associated with impairments with functional words and complex sentences. Speech errors of people with aphasia (PWA) have been reported to be selective, with patterns of omissions in functional words, most notably in the domain of tense inflection on verbs compared to agreement in morphologically rich languages. Aims In languages like English, where tense and agreement are hard to disentangle in their inflectional paradigms, investigations of the inflectional domain in PWA are rare. In this study, we introduce a novel approach that allows the disentangling of inflectional errors in English through the patterns of copula omission of the verb to be. The inflectional system of the functional verb to be is richer, and its distribution in the sentence is based on the semantics of its predicate (stage-level vs. individual-level). Methods and procedures Spontaneous productions of 16 PWA collated from AphasiaBank transcripts were analysed for violations of tense alongside other patterns of error that could suggest an impairment in the inflectional domain. Outcomes and results Copula deletion was found to be modulated by the semantics of the predicate, showing a selective pattern of omission in stage-level predicates. Incorrect case assignment (accusative in place of nominative) was also observed as an indicator of impaired tense. Conclusions The results confirm the effectiveness of copula to be to investigate the English inflectional system and substantiate previous studies on selective errors in the verbal domain in PWA in English.

Two Types of Constructionalization Processes in Spanish and Portuguese Cleftedwh-interrogatives

AbstractThe present paper analyzes and compares the use of cleftedwh-interrogatives in spoken Madrid Spanish, Puerto Rican Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. In a first step, a typology of the discourse functions of cleftedwh-interrogatives is established. This typology is partially governed by the strength of the presupposition of the proposition of thewh-interrogative. The results suggest the existence of two distinct constructionalization processes 1 March 2021. First, in the Spanish dialects, cleftedwh-interrogatives with copula deletion are specialized in the expression of interactional challenges. Second, both Puerto Rican Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese evidence a change in the use of information-seeking cleftedwh-interrogatives towards contexts in which the proposition of the interrogative is not activated. Consequently, in these dialects cleftedwh-interrogatives can be used to establish questions not related to the current Question Under Discussion. However, this semantic change can be characterized as a constructionalization process only in Brazilian Portuguese.

The Lightness of English Copula Be

The purpose of this research is twofold: firstly, it is to clarify the syntactic and semantic status of the copula be; secondly, it is to see how much light the copula be and argue that the copula be is light enough to be a null copula at the position of a light verb v of vP without a specifier. I argue that the copula be is an impoverished category and the lightness of copula be is a pure instantiation of a functional head v, in which a little v introduces verbal predicates as well as external arguments. The proposal in this paper is supported by synchronic and diachronic data. The optional existence of the null copula in synchronic grammatical diversities like child acquisition, standard English casual speech, journal headlines, rhetoric, and African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is discussed to prove the lightness of copula be. Diachronically, the grammaticalization shows that the null copula can be a by-product of copularization in the unidirectionality of grammaticalization in English.

Verbos copulativos com locativos em Português Europeu e em Língua Gestual Portuguesa

Verbs and their syntactic and semantic properties have been studied in several languages, in different theoretical frameworks. However, as for copulative verbs, studies of Sign Languages are still scarce, mainly of Portuguese Sign Language. Therefore, in this paper, some properties of predicative phrases with adjectives, participles and locatives in European Portuguese and Portuguese Sign Language are studied, comparing them with other Oral Languages, in particular Iberian Romance languages, and also with other Sign Languages. Portuguese Sign Language data seem to indicate that the copulative verb is lexically realized when there is a locative predicate and that with a non-locative predicate a null copula occurs.

Copula Deletion in San Andresan Creole

This paper deals with copula deletion in San Andresan Creole (SAC), an English-lexifier creole spoken in the Caribbean islands of Colombia. One of the most widely studied features of Caribbean creoles is the variable use of the verb BE (see Labov 1969; Holm 1976; Rickford 1996; Sharma and Rickford 2009; Michaelis et al. 2013, etc.). We aim to establish the linguistic and social determinants of observable variation in the copula system of SAC. To this end we will look primarily into BE presence (e.g. dei waz der an di fishin graun ‘they were there at the fishing ground’) vs BE deletion (e.g. shi veri hongri ‘she (was) very hungry’), and its distribution according to linguistic variables (e.g. grammatical context, grammatical category and grammatical person of the subject, and tense). While bearing in mind the complex linguistic situation in Colombia, and in the Caribbean generally, these findings provide a more complete picture of variation in the use of BE in SAC and will offer valuable evidence regarding the vitality, unity and hetereogeneity of this creole. The probabilistic analysis of the results shows that grammatical context and grammatical category of the subject determine variation in this domain of grammar, repeating a recurrent pattern shown by other Atlantic creoles. These findings provide a more complete picture of variation in the use of BE in SAC and offer valuable evidence regarding the vitality, unity and heterogeneity of this creole.

The Biblical Hebrew Beth Essentiae: Predicate Marker

The Biblical Hebrew preposition b has many functions, including one traditionally called the beth essentiae. The standard example is Exod 18:4: ki ’elohe avi b‘ezri, “for the God of my father (is) my help.” Most scholars agree that this usage of beth marks an equivalence or predication, the notable exception being Whitley (1972). The goal of this paper is to provide a generative syntactic analysis that supports the majority view and to respond to Whitley’s two most important counterarguments, namely that beth is unnecessary as marker of predication, since Biblical Hebrew allows null copula clauses, and that the occurrence of beth with the verb hayah shows that beth must have some other function or else be pleonastic. I propose that the beth essentiae is an (optional) overt marker of predication and that it is the overt realisation of the functional predication head Pr. This syntactic argument is supported by cross?linguistic data.

Adjectival sluices in Hungarian

Hungarian adjectival sluices show agreement characteristics of predicative adjectives, even though the correlate of the adjective is in attributive position. This has been taken as evidence for the existence of non-isomorphic (i.e. copular/cleft) sources for the ellipsis site. However, such an analysis could only capture the distribution of apparent case-mismatches by positing copular sources for a subset of Hungarian sluices—a conceptually unappealing state of affairs. Instead we provide a more parsimonious analysis, which predicts the data without needing to posit exceptional sources. In particular, we argue for the existence of two different configurations: (1) one involving isomorphic wh-sources followed by ellipsis, and (2) one that does not involve ellipsis at all, but is rather a case of pseudosluicing. Pseudosluicing is the combination of a null subject and a null copula—elements that are independently available in the language, and whose restricted distribution explains constraints we observe on the distribution of pseudosluicing. Thus, on our analysis, only isomorphic wh-questions are possible sources for Hungarian sluicing structures, consistent with the most restrictive theories of elliptical identity.

Lyrics and language awareness

Commercially successful pop lyrics are an important part of students’ lives, represent authentic language material, are easily accessible, and may thus constitute a helpful starting point for various aspects of foreign language education. Despite this, they seem to be underexploited,especially when topics such as grammar instruction are tackled. This may be due to their (traditionally ascribed) “low culture” status and the undesired presence of allegedly ungrammatical content, notably in terms of non-standard features. Based on a corpus of c. 550,000 words, this paper will present an analysis of the salience of such features in Englishpop lyrics. The results suggest that the material studied actually features a rich array of nonstandard grammatical phenomena, such as multiple negation, ain’t as auxiliary, me instead of I, copula deletion, etc. (as commonly proscribed in English language education). From a pedagogical perspective, it is therefore argued that using lyrics in the classroom may offer students a welcome opportunity to engage with various types of grammaticality, introducing them to authentic language in a naturalistic way. More specific issues to be addressed with the eventual aim of raising students’ language awareness through working with pop lyrics are that assessments of grammaticality are (i) very much context-dependent, for instance in terms of acceptability of certain structures and variants in different registers (e.g. lyrics vs. conversation vs. formal writing) and (ii) may also differ across varieties of English represented in the lyrics (e.g. various British dialects and sociolects, African American English as represented in rap, Jamaican Creoleas represented in reggae, etc.).

The Neighborhood and Surrounding City, 1926–2019, and: The Neighborhood Girls Catch Lordstown Syndrome, and: The Neighborhood Girls Fantasize about the WKBN Meteorologist, and: The Neighborhood Girls Ask the WKBN Meteorologist, and: 10¢ Beer Night at Municipal Stadium, Cleveland, Ohio, June 4, 1974, and: The Neighborhood Girls Go on Strike, and: he WKBN Meteorologist Finally Stops by the Dairy Queen, and:

The Neighborhood and Surrounding City, 1926–2019, and: The Neighborhood Girls Catch Lordstown Syndrome, and: The Neighborhood Girls Fantasize about the WKBN Meteorologist, and: The Neighborhood Girls Ask the WKBN Meteorologist, and: 10¢ Beer Night at Municipal Stadium, Cleveland, Ohio, June 4, 1974, and: The Neighborhood Girls Go on Strike, and: he WKBN Meteorologist Finally Stops by the Dairy Queen, and: The Neighborhood Girls Offer Me Allison Pitinii Davis (bio) The Neighborhood and Surrounding City, 1926–2019 [North, to Cleveland. West, to Akron. East, to Pittsburgh. South, to Wheeling.] lordstown assembly: The last local GM plant. Opened in 1966. Produced almost two million Pontiac Firebirds. Site of 1972 strike: “The strike lasted a total of 22 days and cost GM $150 million. Later strikers elsewhere who similarly engaged in disrupting production lines were labeled as having ‘Lordstown Syndrome.’ . . . Due to their ‘hipness,’ long hair, and mod fashion, the strikers were referred to by the magazine Newsweek as an ‘industrial Woodstock.’” Shut down in 2019. downtown: enter a chorus of Rust Belt fathers: Let [ ] = the demolished. “Those [ ]s were where the mills were.” “And that [ ] is where we danced.” “No, it was [ ].” “Maybe for white people who don’t remember the [ ].” en route, Glenwood Avenue: Foster’s Theater: 1939: Hold That Co-ed— “Swinging, Singing Football Fun Frolic.” 1960s: Fellini’s 8½. 1979: Summer Heat—“The Deer Hunter of Porn.” wkbn: First News at Noon: The weather moves from west to east, like English. [! ] First News at 6: The Neighborhood Girls are in love with the new meteorologist. First News at 11:00: A meteorologist will let you know/if you’re reading glare or snow.//Around white space letters form a cage:/a storm system on a page. [End Page 9] en route, Market Street: Uptown Theater: 1926: Joan Crawford stars in Sally, Irene, and Mary. 1979: Rocky II. 2017: for sale for $75,000. Contact Jose Cupeles. the neighborhood: North Midland region infinitival copula deletion: “Your car needs washed.” “Your clothes need cleaned.” “Your yia yia needs picked up.” “Your baby wants fed.” “The circle needs cut.” car tinsel car tinsel car tinsel the dairy queen on market street: Up the road from the Youngstown and Southern Railway (1904–1993). Employer of local neighborhood girls. Right off the turnpike and down the road from a trucking motel. the mahoning river starts at the Ohio as Beaver River, then flows from the southeast to the northwest. Petroleum hydrocarbons, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and mercury are above safe maximum levels. [End Page 10] The Neighborhood Girls Catch Lordstown Syndrome but if you want our version, you’ll payin installments. You’ll neigh in a stalluntil we come out and free you. We hear you,we hear you over the factories and over the wildcats, the slowdowns, the one of manyslanted atop another. All marked downfor condemnation, demolition—baby, do you parsethis diction? Merciful, our kind of telling. Its sheen: our boyfriends’ sweat rolling off the car plant.We caught their syndrome—a tragic case—spreading at the conveyor’s pace,but we’re no fodder for your headlines. Our picket line is understood:another day in the neighborhood. [End Page 11] The Neighborhood Girls Fantasize about the WKBN Meteorologist The last one barely made it. Starter job.Fair-weather friend. But you, with your brand-newdiploma, your knack for atmosphericpressure—after your projected forecast, our cars need washed. Our mouths need fixed.Our grammar’s all grimed: primers don’treach these parts. Our parts are perfect,you’ll need a coupon. Our moms coupon Tuesdays, don’t dare disturb them.This whole town—a little much. But then againagainst the summer with heatindexing our index fingers, with the layoffs driven clear through May—it’s not half bad. Weather it. Stay. [End Page 12] The Neighborhood Girls Ask the WKBN Meteorologist do we accumulate? At apexes of lake effectwe Fahrenheit, we divide downto single digits—could you grip a girl who dipsbelow zero? Will you hero that mythologyweekdays at 6? We’d watch your station all shift exceptwhen you flip the fronts aroundour Blizzards drop, we...

The grammaticalisation of a copula in vernacular Arabic

It is standardly assumed that Arabic copula constructions with present tense interpretation involve either a null copula or a pronominal copula. This paper provides evidence that some Arabic vernaculars are developing a three-way split, with an additional copula form occurring in some predicational copula clauses. This form has grammaticalised out of the active participle form of the posture verb meaning ‘sit’. While at different stages of development in different varieties of Arabic, this emergent copula shows the characteristics of a locative (temporary and/or permanent, depending on the variety) or contingent state (stage-level) copula, standing in contrast with the use of a null copula strategy, which marks characterising/defining individual-level properties. We propose a grammaticalisation trajectory for this copula in the Arabic varieties based on the comparative patterns of variation across those dialects, showing that the trajectory postulated for other, typologically distinct languages is also applicable to Arabic and hence providing further support for it. We suggest that there is also evidence of a distinct but related trajectory in some varieties which have developed a semantically bleached lexical existential predicate from this same form. We provide further evidence of the importance of the temporary/permanent split in the copula systems of Arabic arguing that the developing split copula system based on the active participle of the ‘sit’ verb is in alignment with the development of two other parallel split copula systems in other geographically diverse Arabic varieties, which use different bases/strategies for grammaticalisation.

Existence, location, possession, and copula in Malabar Indo-Portuguese

Abstract This paper offers a diachronic and a contact-based analysis of existential, locative, possessive, and copulative constructions in Malabar Indo-Portuguese creole (MIP). The existential, locative, and possessive predicates are all expressed with the copulative verb tæ, and nominal and property-denoting predicates can either have the copula tæ or zero copula. I analyze these copulative constructions by establishing their sources in the Portuguese lexifier and Malayalam substrate/adstrate. I show that although the Portuguese verbs ter ‘have’ and estar ‘be’ have paved the way to the semantics of tæ, Malayalam had a strong impact on the morphosyntax and semantics of existential, locative, possessive, and copulative constructions in MIP. This influence is most notable in the case of possessives, which take dative subjects. These findings are compared to the relevant structures in other South Asian languages and show that the existence of locative possession is a strong areal feature of South Asia. I also show that the variability of copula usage in nominal and property-denoting predicates can be explained by variable input from Portuguese and Malayalam copulative constructions. One of the most salient features influenced by Malayalam is the choice of what are etymologically Portuguese nouns instead of adjectives in property-denoting predicates.

The Analysis of Verbless Sentences

This paper aims to discuss the analysis of verbless sentences in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) within the Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) framework. It discusses the previous analyses in transformational grammar and shows some problems in these analyses, arguing that LFG is more flexible and able to analyze this kind of sentences with fewer problems. This paper argues that verbless sentences in MSA should be divided into two types: the first is when the second part of a verbless sentence is an adjective, and in this type, we argue that the adjective should be analyzed as a predicate within the single-tier analysis. The second type is verbless sentences that contain a nonadjectival complement, and this type is analyzed as containing a null copula within the double-tier analysis.

Qoheleth: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text

Qoheleth: A Handbook on the Hebrew Text

Regular and copular fragments in Basaá

AbstractThe aim of this Article is to propose that fragment answers in Basaá (Bantu) derive from two different sources, namely, a regular source and a copular source. Regular fragments are those that are derived by movement of a Negative Polarity Item (NPI) or a CP complement to the left periphery of the clause followed by clausal ellipsis (Merchant 2004 and related work). Conversely, copular fragments involve a biclausal structure whereby the focalized fragment, no matter the syntactic function it fulfills in clause structure, finally ends up being the subject of the null verbal copula of the main clause. The fragment is initially selected as the external argument of the null verbal copula within the matrix VP along the lines of the VP-Internal Subject Hypothesis (Koopman and Sportiche 1991). From Spec-VP it raises to Spec-TP to satisfy the EPP requirements. The internal argument of the null copula is a headless relative in which a relative operator (covert/overt) moves to Spec-CP, a position above FocP the target of ellipsis. This gives rise to a structure whereby the fragment answer in the matrix clause and the relative operator in the embedded clause resist ellipsis. The analysis also provides semantic evidence that copular fragments are not clefts. The ellipsis approach is supported by a range of grammatical properties such as connectivity effects, locality constraints and subcategorization requirements. This paper is not only a contribution to Merchant’s (2004) ellipsis approach but it also provides new evidence for our understanding of the crosslinguistic variation of ellipsis.

The Reduction and Simplification of English Grammar during Computer Mediated Communication in Pakistani Context

Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) is proliferating like anything in our lives. Communication theorists have been exploring its various dimensions; however, CMC grammar appears to be a less attempted area. The concept of CMC grammar seems to be an emerging phenomenon in mediated- communication. To explore this phenomenon, the present study sets out to investigate the identified forms of CMC grammar of students at graduate level in Pakistan. A sample of 50 BS students was chosen to address the core research questions. The data was collected primarily from the verbal postings of the participants from facebook walls of selected students. To avoid superficiality, the study was backed by imperial findings and factual details. The study reveals that English Grammar is subject to reduction and simplification in computer mediated-communication. The elements of reduction and simplification can be characterised by subject omission, copula deletion and absence of auxiliaries in progressive and interrogative situation. These features are so widespread that they are increasingly getting stable and intelligible across the board. The study speculates that ever- increasing proliferation of these features signposts a unique grammar which is the central investigation of this study.

What does it take to be a copula?

AbstractThis paper argues that copular sentences without an overt copular predicate do project a VP with a phonologically null head, hence so-called “verbless” copular sentences are illusory. Data from Standard Arabic, Spanish, Maltese, Russian, Jamaican Creole, Finnish and Hungarian copular sentences are used to support this claim. It is also claimed here that variation between the habitual property vs.ad hocproperty interpretations (traditionally called the individual level vs. stage level distinction) of non-verbal predicates found in copular sentences is closely related to the choice of the copula in multiple BE-system languages. Whilst the current accounts explain this variation by introducing an abstract aspectual operator or an incorporated abstract preposition in the functional layer of the copular predicate, the present proposal derives these interpretive differences from the presence or absence of an OPaltalternative state operator, which can bind the temporal variable of non-verbal predicates in two ways.Negation and temporal adverbials show scope ambiguity in copular sentences. They either take scope over the whole proposition or only over the non-verbal predicate. Such interpretive differences are demonstrated in Russian and Hungarian in Section 4 of this paper, however, they are taken to be valid cross-linguistically. These amibiguities cannot be explained under the “verbless copular sentence” account but fall out naturally from the “zero copula” analysis.The “alternative state” approach can be extended to dream narratives and other nonveridical contexts, which serve as alternative triggers. The existing analyses have nothing to say about such contexts.

“I DONT CARE ONE CENT WHAT [Ø] GOYING ON IN GREAT Britten”: BE-Deletion IN IRISH ENGLISH

In the English-speaking world, be-deletion, or copula absence, is best known as a likely creole feature of African American English (AAE) and basilectal Caribbean Englishes. This historical case study examines Raymond Hickey’s contention that attestations of be-deletion in present-day Irish English (IrE) must lead to revision of accounts assuming that be-deletion does not and did not occur in the Englishes of Britain and Ireland. A survey of reports of be-deletion in present-day and historical varieties of British English (BrE) and IrE suggests that be-deletion is and was found not only in Ireland, but also in Scotland and northern England, regions that contributed greatly to British settlement in Ireland. Deletion appears to have been widespread in IrE historically and was present in time to cross the Atlantic with Ulster Scots (Scotch-Irish) settlers in the eighteenth century and with other Irish emigrants in the nineteenth. However, an analysis of the letters of one individual writer from the Corpus of Irish English Correspondence (CORIECOR) shows that his be-deletion in a range of preceding and following grammatical environments deviates from the robust patterns reported for AAE and Caribbean Englishes. IrE is thus unlikely to have exerted much direct influence on be-deletion in AAE and Caribbean varieties. Nonetheless, be-deletion in IrE may have provided input into some marginal grammatical contexts where deletion was once found in AAE but has since been lost. Some of these—such as following what, it, that, and this—seem to be robust contexts for be-deletion in the IrE letters and are contexts where copula deletion in the Irish language suggests that the Irish substrate exerted some influence on be-deletion in IrE.

The role of copula deletion on the emergence of a new grammatical feature

The role of copula deletion on the emergence of a new grammatical feature

The copula in Ikalanga

This article discusses the most commonly used methods of expressing the copula in Ikalanga, arguing that although Ikalanga has no single way in which it expresses the copula, it nevertheless has a base copula form, -li, a possible remnant from Proto-Bantu. Evidence for this comes from the fact that not only is -li still used to express copula relations in past and present tense forms, but it is also consistently used in the formation of most negative copula sentences. Further, the article argues that the copulative forms ndi-, i- and the expression of the copula through tone are allomorphs of -li and that the morphological form of each of these allomorphs is determined by the class of the noun involved. In addition, the article also argues that although the copula -li is still in existence in Ikalanga, it is nevertheless fading from the language as there are indications that it is being replaced by the ‘zero copula’ and other forms of expressing the copula.

IDENTITIES IN TRANSITION: THE USE OF AAVE GRAMMATICAL FEATURES BY HISPANIC ADOLESCENTS IN TWO NORTH CAROLINA COMMUNITIES

This Study analyzes the accommodation of certain African American Vernacular English (AAVE) grammatical features by 65 Hispanic middle schoolers in two newly established hispanic communities in North Carolina: Durham (urban) and Zebulon (rural). It examines the extent to which three grammatical features (invariant be, copula deletion, and third-person singular -s deletion) are being adopted, the manner in which they are being used, and the influence of various social factors on usage. The students' use of these variables is then compared with how the variables are used by their African American peers. The study found that Durham Hispanic adolescents were much more likely to use AAVE features than their Zebulon counterparts and that in some cases Durham Hispanic adolescents actually used some AAVE features at a higher rate than their African American peers. Taking various social factors into account, including gender, length of residency, gang affiliation, and contact with African Americans, the data suggest that only gender and gang affiliation are influential in the use of AAVE features within this community: males and students who report gang affiliation being more likely to use these AAVE features. This finding, along with the sharp contrast between the rural and urban speakers, suggests that some Durham Hispanic adolescents may use AAVE features to create—or “index”—an identity associated with urbanity and masculinity.