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This book is concerned with a class of copular clauses known as
specificational clauses, and its relation to other kinds of copular
structures, predicational and equative clauses in particular. Based on
evidence from Danish and English, I argue that specificational clauses
involve the same core predication structure as predicational clauses - one
which combines a referential and a predicative expression to form a minimal
predicational unit - but differ in how the predicational core is realized
syntactically. Predicational copular clauses represent the canonical
realization, where the referential expression is aligned with the most
prominent syntactic position, the subject position. Specificational clauses
involve an unusual alignment of the predicative expression with subject
position. I suggest that this unusual alignment is grounded in information
structure: the alignment of the less referential DP with the subject
position serves a discourse connective function by letting material that is
relatively familiar in the discourse appear before material that is
relatively unfamiliar in the discourse. Equative clauses are argued to be
fundamentally different.
Table of contents
Acknowledgements vii
1. Introduction 1–3
I. Structure 4
2. Predicate topicalization 6–40
3. Alternative structures for specificational clauses 41–45
II. Meaning 46
4. Decomposing copular clauses 48–63
5. Determining the subject type 64–93
6. The type of the predicate complement 94–107
7. Consequences and extensions 108–130
III. Use 131
8. Aspects of use 133–161
9. An intergrated analysis 162–190
10.Conclusion 191–194
References 195–204
Index 205–210
"This is a beautiful piece of work, one that I have had much pleasure
reading and discussing with students and colleagues. Mikkelsen's account of
copular clauses is simply elegant. She is so thorough in her treatment of
these copular constructions that in our discussion of her analysis in a
recent MIT seminar there wasn't any comment that wasn't already anticipated
in her own caveats and footnotes."
Michel DeGraff, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT
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