Predicative Constructions Research Articles

How to be a ham sandwich or an eel: The English deferred equative and the Japanese eel sentence

In some languages including English and Japanese, a nominal predicate construction (NPC; "NP1 is NP2") has a marked variety—"open-ended-relation NPCs" (ONPCs), to label it—where the referents of the subject NP and the predicate NP are understood to be in some pragmatically prominent relation other than identity or inclusion (e.g. I'm the ham sandwich 'I'm the customer who ordered the ham sandwich'). The Japanese ONPC has been called the "eel sentence (eel construction)", after an oft-cited example involving unagi 'eel' as its predicate NP. The English ONPC is discussed in good detail by Ward (2004; "Equatives and deferred reference", Language 80) under the rubric of the "deferred equative". The ONPCs in the two languages can be naturally used only under limited discourse configurations, with the English one being more severely constrained than the Japanese one. This work develops semantic analyses of the two ONPCs that improve on previous accounts.

Verb Constructions Expressing the Functional-Semantic Concept HUMAN AGE in the Yakut Language

The article presents the results of a morpho-syntactic analysis of the most common verb constructions denoting the functional-semantic concept ʻhuman ageʼ in the Yakut language. The subject matter of the study is set expressions in Yakut containing verbs and participles. The relevance of the study is due to the lack of knowledge about the functionalsemantic concept PERSON’S AGE in Yakut linguistics. Scientific novelty of the study is in paying special attention not only to morphological forms and grammatical features, but also to semantics. It was shown that in expressing the functional-semantic concept PERSON’S AGE in the Yakut language, predicative constructions are used, including two types of participles: with the affix of possession -laah and with the affix of the past tense of the verb -byt. Constructions with -laah have a universal meaning denoting any age of a person. In the reproduction of the grammatical environment of predicates with the affix -byt, the following lexical-semantic groups of actants serving as subjects or objects of action were identified: borbui ʻkneesʼand meii (өй) ʻbrainʼ are used exclusively to describe the age of young, strong, intelligent people, while the names of tissues composed of cornified cells (battakh ʻhairʼ, bytik ʻbeard, mustacheʼ, tiis ʻteethʼ) are used exclusively to describe the age of older people. Further, it has been shown that in constructions with complex izafet the verbs of qualitative change of state are combined with a name in the dead genitive case (GEN) -n, in constructions with simple izafet the verbs of physical influence on an object operate with a name in the accusative case (ACC) -n. The ‘meteorological’ lexeme haar is recorded in two types of verb constructions: with the verbs үkten ʻto comeʼ—the onset of the year; and with the verbs tuһerbit/uullarbyt ʻmeltedʼ—living through the year.

Echoing Retorts in Hárbarðsljóð and Lokasenna

Echoing Retorts in <i>Hárbarðsljóð</i> and <i>Lokasenna</i>

Non-finite constructions in Wolof

In this article, I study the concept of finiteness in Wolof. I propose a list of criteria for defining what a prototypical finite form is in this language. I am interested in the three constructions most distant from this prototype: the infinitive, the subjunctive-consecutive and the imperative. The subjunctive-consecutive and the infinitive have few characteristics of the prototype. The instantiations of these constructions can thus be considered as non-(fully)-finite forms. The imperative also has relatively few characteristics of the prototype. However, the characteristics that move the imperative away from prototypical finite forms are not the same as those noted for the subjunctive-consecutive and the infinitive. The imperative is therefore a specific predicative construction in this respect.

ENGLISH PREDICATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS: STRUCTURE AND TYPES

This paper deals with the typology of predicative constructions in the English language based on their structure. It provides a theoretical overview of the existing standpoints as for the above mentioned language phenomenon, specifying the structure of the English predicative constructions, and determining their types. Any predicative construction consists of two parts – nominal + verbal. Between the two parts of the predicative construction there is a secondary predicative relation, i.e. the relation similar to that as the subject and the predicate have. The predicative construction may be used only when there are two different doers of the actions in the sentence. As soon as there are three types of verbals in English (the Infinitive, the Gerund, and the Participle), it is only logical to identify infinitival, gerundial, and participial predicative constructions: there is no predicative construction without a verbal, and then the name of the construction indicates the type of the verbal used in it. As a result of the study eleven types of predicative constructions were defined, namely: two gerundial types (Gerundial and Half-Gerundial), three infinitival types (Objective Infinitive, Subjective Infinitive, and For-to-Infinitive), six participial types (Objective Participial, Subjective Participial, Nominative Absolute Participial, Prepositional Absolute Participial, and two purely absolute constructions where there is no explicit verbal constituent but it is implied and can be easily restored – Nominative Absolute (Participial) and Prepositional Absolute (Participial)). The paper is believed to be of practical use for future translators / interpreters and English-language teachers, for it gives both an overall idea of a predicative construction as of an English language economy means and syntactic functions of all predicative constructions in the sentence.

Kashubian – its Middle Low German heritage as partial superstrate

Abstract This article is about a Slavic language that has undergone massive lexical and grammatical influence from medieval Low German (MLG). As it has retained its fundamentally Slavic character, we focus on the heritage status of Low German intruding into what essentially remains Slavic typologically. Kashubian is West Slavic with a considerable (Middle) Low German heritage. As expected for a substrate language, such as Kashubian, there is considerable lexical, but minor syntactic German influence in Kashubian. Yet, one main typological characteristic of Slavic Kashubian and Polish, the cross-Slavic aspect and tense paradigm has been expanded by the miec ʻhave’ and the bëc ʻbe’ periphrases expressing tense in the sense of the German perfect tense using the verbal bracket. We trace the change from the pretemporal periphrastic predicative construction (subject-PP-Aux) and the attributive pattern (subject-Aux-PP) in Kashubian (and Polish), as opposed to the superstate German tense periphrasis and the verbal bracket “subject [-Aux-object-PP]” or “subject-object-PP-Aux”; its link to the Polish aspect and simple tense pattern. And we ask the question: are there evolutionary genetic components in the heritage situation that might lead to genetic patterns of natural L-change and grammaticalization? This paper is based on the view that grammar change in a heritage language like Kashubian is not necessarily a case of Darwinian (genetic) evolution in that the targets are seldom cognitively encapsulated procedural parts of grammar (such as the German verbal bracket in dependent clauses of German). The reason is that the latter is structural in Low German, the superstrate language, while it may be used both structurally and relationally in Kashubian and non-structurally (i.e., only relationally) in Polish. Much rather, the cognitively accessible, declarative content of grammars is open for social changes (lexical inventories and their paradigms). Theoretically, the paper is framed under modern heritage considerations (Kelleher, Ann. 2010. What is a heritage language? Davis: University of California. http://www.cal.org/heritage/pdfs/briefs/What-is-a-Heritage-Language.pdf (accessed 26 February 2021); Polinsky, Maria. 2018. Heritage languages and their speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Polinsky, Maria &amp; Gregory Scontras. 2019. Understanding heritage languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. 1–17; Scontras, Gregory &amp; Michael T. Putnam. 2020. Lesser studied Heritage Languages: An Appeal to the Dyad. Heritage Language Journal. 152–155).

Exploring the Application of the Random Matrix Thinking Model in Teaching English Predicate Constructions

This paper, the random matrix thinking model, studies the grammatical features of verbs on random matrix and logical relations and designs a model for teaching English predicate constructions by combining random matrix thinking and arithmetic rules. In this paper, an attention mechanism-based English predicate verb recognition method and a BERT-based English predicate verb recognition method are proposed for the characteristics of predicate verbs as the focal point of sentences. Since the attention mechanism can obtain the long-distance semantic dependency information in the sentence, the attention mechanism-based method can effectively improve the recognition performance of the predicate verb compared with the traditional way. The BERT-based English predicative verb recognition model improves the former approach by taking full advantage of the input corpus and improving the model performance. A random matrix-based predicate verb uniqueness discrimination method is proposed for the uniqueness of predicate verbs in sentences. By setting the classification fitting conditions, the data can be optimized to output and fully fit the global identity of the predicate verb in the penalty during the training process, and better results are achieved.

АРГУМЕНТНА СТРУКТУРА НА НЯКОИ ДВОЙКИ ПСИХОЛОГИЧЕСКИ ПРЕДИКАТИ И ПРЕДИКАТИВИ / ARGUMENT STRUCTURE OF SOME PAIRS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL PREDICATES AND PREDICATIVES

The main topic of this study is the syntactic realization of the arguments of the predicates радвам (to rejoice; make someone glad) and радвам се (to be glad) and the predicative constructions expressing positive emotion (joy) in Bulgarian. Verbs, adjectives and adverbs denoting emotions, also known as physiological verbs or psych predicates, obligatorily assign the semantic role of experiencer to one of their arguments. The comparison between verbal predicates and predicative constructions demonstrates the differences concerning the type of argument expression (as a direct or an indirect object), the prepositions that introduce indirect object phrases, explicit and null subject realizations and the syntactic marking of semantic roles. Keywords: emotional predicates, psychological verbs, complements, experiencer

АПОЗИТИВНІ СТРУКТУРИ ЯК СИНОНІМІЧНІ МОВЛЕННЄВІ ІННОВАЦІЇ У ФРАНЦУЗЬКІЙ ХУДОЖНІЙ ПРОЗІ ХХ – ПОЧАТКУ ХХІ СТОЛІТЬ

In this article the appositive structures of modern French fiction are studied in the continuum language → discourse and defined as two-basis (with several transformational terminal chains) synonymic transforms of the virtual (linguistic) primary subordinate proposition which are formed in the space of the operating time of a thought movement and actualized in the form of compressed discourse innovations with the implicit predication. The goal of this research is the establishment of the structural-semantic typology of mono- and polypredicative utterances with the appositive synonymic transforms of French fiction of the XXth – the beginning of the XXIst centuries, the inverse reconstruction (discourse → language) of the virtual transformational processes and of the primary proposition within the functional‑semantic macrofield of the analyzed appositive constructions and the justification of the co(n)textual pertinence of the actualized appositive preferential options. In the article the method of the inverse reconstruction of the systemic (linguistic) transformational operations is used with the aim to reveal all the members of synonymic chains. The “alternative” linguistic experiment, that consists on the artificial substitution by the recipient of some utterance of the analyzed discursive fragment with the synonymic utterance, allows to determine the degree of the co(n)textual pertinence of the primary proposition and of each synonymic transform. The immediately and distantly pre-, inter- and postpositive mono- and polysynonymic (with the polysynonymy in the level of a syntagm and the utterance) appositive preferential options with explicative, concessive, conditional and causal semantic values are distinguished. They revealed the mono- and polypredicative utterances: a) with explicit actant-referent point of the appositive segment; b) with implicit actant and indirect designation of the appositive referent by the immediate actant markers in the form of possessive, demonstrative et al. adjectives that introduce the substantive which marks the part of body, the human condition, the feeling etc.; c) with implicit actant and indirect designation of the appositive referent by the distant actant markers (most often by the personal pronouns direct and indirect complements). The virtual transformational processes are inversely reconstructed and the degree of the co(n)textual pertinence of each member of the synonymic chain of analyzed appositive constructions conditioned by the author’s intention to avoid the reactualization of the exteriorized referents, the overload of the co(n)text with complex predicative constructions or by his idiostylistic peculiarities, is determined.

ПРИНОС КЪМ СЕМАНТИЧНАТА ХАРАКТЕРИСТИКА НА ПРЕДИКАТИВИТЕ ЗА ВЪТРЕШНИ ПРЕЖИВЯВАНИЯ СЪС СУБЕКТ В ДАТЕЛЕН ПАДЕЖ / A CONTRIBUTION TO THE SEMANTIC CHARACTERIZATION OF DATIVE PREDICATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS DENOTING MENTAL EXPERIENCES

The article presents and interprets the constructions consisting of a predicative referring to inner human experiences and a dative clitic denoting the human that experiences them. I begin by providing an analysis of the main features of these constructions and the characteristics that distinguish them from dative predicate constructions and impersonal constructions which realise or imply a nominative or accusative human experiencer. Special attention is paid to the place and role of oblique case pronominal clitics. The grammatical functions and the content of these clitics are clarified. From a semantic point of view, a specific feature of the predicatives from the studied group is that they name unambiguously defined classes of words – perceptions, emotions and evaluations made on a cognitive and emotional-affective basis. An analysis of the peculiarities in the realisation of the category of person by the verb in these constructions is offered. I introduce the concept of body image, which helps in clarifying the problem regarding the possibilities for spatial localisation of the internal states and assessments. Keywords: predicatives, dative case, pronominal clitics, dative constructions, impersonal constructions, words for psychological experiences

БЕЗЛИЧНИ ПРЕДИКАТИВНИ КОНСТРУКЦИИ В БЪЛГАРСКИЯ ЕЗИК: СТРУКТУРЕН МИНИМУМ И СЕМАНИЧНА ОБУСЛОВЕНОСТ / IMPERSONAL PREDICATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS IN BULGARIAN: STRUCTURAL MINIMUM AND SEMANTIC DETERMINATION

The paper deals with the semantic and syntactic features of Bulgarian impersonal constructions consisting of a copula and a predicative. Depending on the meaning ex-pressed (a state or evaluation), three types of basic structural patterns are distinguished: zero-, one- and two-place constructions. The argument positions of the one- and two-place constructions are occuped by an experiencer dative pronoun (the logical subject) and/or a clausal complement. I present the possible combinations of these elements as well as the semantic differences among them. I also demonstrate that the semantics of the constructions depends on the meaning of the predicative lexemes and on the presence or absence of an experiencer argument or a clausal complement. Keywords: impersonal predicative constructions, structural minimum, semantics, Bulgarian language

Adjectives in Arabic

The main aim of this paper is to describe the main adjectival constructions in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). It contributes a new analysis of an adjectival construction in MSA that was analysed in traditional grammar as a special postnominal adjectival construction, called the unreal adjectival construction. We argue that it is an example of prenominal adjectival constructions in MSA. We also provide a new analysis of the prenominal construction, suggesting that the adjective modifies the following noun, and this noun is the subject of the adjective. Moreover, we provide an analysis of predicate adjectives in MSA, whether with or without a copula, arguing that the single-tier analysis in Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) is the appropriate analysis for predicate adjectival constructions in MSA. Additionally, this paper shows the similarities and differences between adjectival words and participial words, which are both used as modifiers in MSA.

Figurative projections of the memory of the Chornobyl disaster in the Ukrainian literature discourse

The article highlights the types of textual-figurative projections of the memory of the man-made disaster at the Chornobyl AES in the language of Ukrainian poetry and literary-journalistic prose, which recorded moral conditions and the social-ecological situation in various verbal formats. The lexical content of these works is a dictionary of the national socio-historical and emotional memory of the tragedy of the Ukrainian people. The core components of the lexical-semantic field «memory» include the nominations memories, remembrance, mention, predicative constructions will not forget, not to forget, moral imperative must not be forgotten. It has been established that the first evaluative association that accompanies the national-historical and literary memory of the Chornobyl disaster recorded in the texts is a tragedy. As a component of the post-Chоrnobyl linguistic picture of the world, this nomination is characterized by semantic ambiguity and multiple interpretations. Its most frequent expressive and evaluative specifiers (trouble, calamity, grief, drama, misfortune, pain) are consistently actualized in compounds with the adjective Chоrnobyl and genitive metaphors with the proper name Chоrnobyl (the trouble of Chоrnobyl, the tragedy of Chоrnobyl). In the thematic area «memory of the Chоrnobyl tragedy», we distinguish such dominant segments as «responsibility», «gratitude», «heroism», «boldness», «bravery», «courage», «deed», «memory of the dead». An important component of the lexical-semantic field «memory» in post-Chоrnobyl literature is the image lessons of Chоrnobyl. Due to the presence of the meaningful words «conclusions» and «responsibility», it becomes an occasional synonym of the tragic collective national experience. Various genres of literary and literary-journalistic texts on the subject of Chоrnobyl testify to the stable two-vector associative-semantic connections of the lexeme memory with concepts, on the one hand, history, past, ancestors, and on the other hand, the future, future generations, descendants. Verbalization of the memory of the Chоrnobyl events is characterized by the use of time circumstances such as forever, always, for life, etc. The language of Ukrainian post-Chоrnobyl poetry and literary-journalistic prose (in particular, the documentary novels of A. Mykhaylenko, L. Dayen, Yu. Shcherbak, V. Yavorivskyi, I. Malyshevskyi, V. Tregubov) about Chornobyl demonstrably reflects the peculiarities of the textual linguistic-figurative projecting of the memory of the man-made disaster at the Chornobyl AES and testifies dense lexical content of the lexical-semantic field «memory».

Analytical causatives: Structural and semantic characteristics of the predicate construction

The main subject in this research is to analyse analytical causatives in Serbian, or analytical predicate constructions with causative meaning. Apart from pointing out the basic typological characteristics of causative constructions, the paper highlights two main topics which deserve our attention, namely the structural features of the predicate construction and the semantic resources of the controlling verb, which performs the operator function. Depending on the grammatical and semantic characteristics of the governing verb, in a certain number of models the function of the causative operator is taken over by nouns. The results we discussed are based on examples from Serbian.

Interaction and Grammar: Predicative Adjective Constructions in English Conversation

This article studies the function of Copular Predicate Constructions in everyday English conversation. We compare predicate adjective constructions (PA) and constructions with a predicate nominal containing an adjective (PAN). We ask whether the attributive function of the adjective or the presence of a noun in the PAN leads to a difference in function in the two constructions. We propose that in most cases the adjective determines the function of the construction, leading to many parallels in usage between the PA and PAN constructions. A comparison with predicate nominal constructions (PN), in contrast, shows that not including an adjective in the constructions leads to a different set of meanings and implications. The conversational usage of these constructions provides evidence for a partial correspondence of form to function: Copular Predicate Constructions often constitute a complete turn in conversation, and if not a full turn, form their own prosodic units. Other properties of these constructions—the definiteness of the NP and the presence or absence of a N—correspond to different interactional work. A comparison of all three constructions shows that the adjective plays a determining interactional role, despite differences in syntactic configuration.

Two Approaches on Echoed Predicate Constructions Revisited

The aim of this paper is to investigate two proposals for Korean echoed predicate constructions (EPCs): head-movement analysis and phrasal movement analysis. Considering some properties of EPCs ― differences in inflectional realizations between the first and the second predicate, asymmetries in duplicating arguments/adjuncts, asymmetries between low and high adverbs, and obligatory doubling of short form negations, we will show challenges the head-movement faces, thereby supporting the claim that EPCs are derived by phrasal movement. We further strengthen our assumption by examining echoed serial verbs. Applying the head-movement approach to three structural analyses of serial verb constructions (SVCs) (i.e., head-adverb, head-complement, head-head relation) all fails. Rather, the phrasal movement approach appropriately manifests the patterns of echoed serial verbs.

Конструкциите с предикативи за психически състояния в българския език – номенклатура и диференциални характеристики

The study attempts to classify the possibilities for predicative constructions in the Bulgarian language from the semantic standpoint. The scope of the analysis are predicative constructions denoting internal experiences interpreted in Bulgarian as psychological states (and not processes, activities, etc.). Three main points of reference serve as a springboard for the analysis: (1) Predicative constructions are chosen as a research goal. (2) Semantic description operates along the lines of the thematic role of the Experiencer as long as it meets the criteria for constructions with predicatives for psychological states. (3) The place and the role of case relations, and in particular their markedness concerning clitics, are considered exemplary of a syncretic grammatical category at the morphology-syntax-semantics interface, thus playing a significant role in liaising the specifics of the construction under scrutiny at all levels of form and function. Special attention is paid to the role of the thematic and type-of-action (Vendlerian) classification of predicates and predicatives capable of entering into the constructions used for expressing psychological states of the Experiencer.

Синтактично описание на предикативите за ментално състояние

The paper examines the argument structure of constructions containing mental-state predicative words in the contemporary Bulgarian language. The source material was extracted from the Bulgarian National Corpus. The analysis focuses on predicates denoting knowledge, confidence and doubt. The research reveals that the role of such predicates can be performed by predicative adverbs (‘yasno’, ‘izvestno’, ‘samnitelno’), predicative nouns (‘istina’, ‘fact’) or predicative adjectives (‘uveren’, ‘siguren’). Cases containing explicit or implicit experiencer arguments are discussed along with the possibilities for expressing the object and the content of knowledge. Some adverbs could express the experiencer’s degree of confidence. The analysis of the empirical data leads to conclusions about the common argument structure of predicative constructions denoting mental state and for the syntactic expression of the arguments.

The Meaning of Plurality in Voice and Aspectual Constructions (Based on the Material of the Yakut Language)

The article is devoted to the functional-semantic analysis of the Yakut predicative constructions which are derived from verb stems in the form of comitative-reciprocal voice and frequentative aspect. Yakut verb forms under discussion, when expressing the categories of reciprocity and distributivity, fall into the functional-semantic field of plurality, in connection with which the problem of intersecting fields and of the interaction of semantic categories within a certain field inevitably arises. The analysis demonstrated that the difference between distributive constructions and reciprocal constructions in the Yakut language consists, first of all, in their content: the semantic invariant for the former is the multiplicity of the action itself whereas for the latter type it is the multiplicity of participants in the action. Objective distributive constructions, as a rule, have three arguments: apart from the agent and patient arguments they also contain an additional object argument which denotes the goal of the action. In reciprocal constructions indicating this participant of the situation is not obligatory. Furthermore, reciprocal and distributive constructions are formed on the basis of verbs which belong to different semantic groups. The majority of indicated verbs represent voice forms derived from the same stem and imply action performed on something plural or something consisting of many parts. Herewith, Yakut reciprocal and distributive constructions are characterized by nearly the same set of group arguments. However, the character of the group argument is particularly important for constructions with distributive content, in reciprocal constructions arguments are almost always singular animate objects.

On the Integration of Dative Adjuncts into Event Structures in Yapa Languages

Warlpiri and Warlmanpa (Ngumpin-Yapa languages of Australia) exhibit a complex predicate construction in which a class of preverbs introduces a single argument that is not shared by the argument structure of the inflecting verb, nor is there necessarily any shared event structure. This is problematic for many theories of linking structures of complex predicates, since no arguments or events are shared between the predicative elements of the complex predicate. The same grammatical relation is instantiated by a beneficiary adjunct. In light of new research in event and argument structure, I propose a lexical rule which introduces an applicative argument to account for the beneficiary construction; and that the preverbs take another predicate as one of their arguments to account for the complex predicates. The applicative rule and the preverbs both introduce an argument of the same grammatical relation, leading to interesting interactions, given that two grammatical relations of the same type are not expected to co-occur within a single clause.