Clause structure is the most widely-studied phenomenon within syntactic theory, because it refers to how words and phrases are embedded within a sentence, their relationships to each other within a sentence, and ultimately, how sentences are layered and represented in the human …
Word classes play a fundamental role in many parts of linguistics. Yet, when looking at words individually, there is a large 'class' of words that does not behave like any other. This is illustrated here by describing the idiosyncratic behaviour of one such word: half. Half is l…
"Copulas (in English, the verb to be) are conventionally defined functionally as a means of relating elements of clause structure, especially subject and complement, and considered to be semantically empty or meaningless. They have received relatively little attention from lingu…
This cross-linguistic study addresses the existing bias against the study of the copula, taking issue with both accepted definitions and descriptions. The author presents an analysis of grammatical descriptions of over 160 languages drawn from the language families of the world.
"Copulas (in English, the verb to be) are conventionally defined functionally as a means of relating elements of clause structure, especially subject and complement, and considered to be semantically empty or meaningless. They have received relatively little attention from lingu…
This is a major cross-linguistic study of 'flexible words', i.e. words that cannot be classified in terms of the traditional lexical categories verb, noun, adjective or adverb. It includes new cross-linguistic studies of word class systems as well as original descriptive and the…
