[Lingtyp] NP + PP construction

Tue Sep 29 08:10:24 UTC 2020

Dear all,

Thank you for the comments you left regarding my question on verbless construction/non-verbal predicates/ellipsis/any of the many other names it is called.
The general viewpoint seems to be that it is in fact fairly common around the world.
It seems to me however that we must distinguish the case of zero copula from other cases of verbless constructions, as some languages allow the two to different degrees.
For example in Russian (1) is acceptable but (2) is not (correct me if I’m wrong):

  1.  Ya          student

1SG       student

`I am a student.’

  1.  *Ya        v            dom

1SG       to          house.ACC

`Intended meaning: I’m going to the house.’
So it seems necessary to me that zero copula should be distinguished from zero verb.
But as Mark pointed out, a language that allos zero copula is also likely to allow zero verb.
Also, as Siva mentioned, it’s interesting and remains the open question why the article must be elided for the sentence to be more natural (Legs off the table compared to your legs off the table).

From Hong Kong,
Ian

From: paolo Ramat<mailto:paolo.ramat at unipv.it>
Sent: Sunday, September 27, 2020 4:49 PM
To: Alex Francois<mailto:alex.francois.cnrs at gmail.com>
Cc: JOO, Ian [Student]<mailto:ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk>; LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG<mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] NP + PP construction

1) Ital. Superman alla riscossa ! (could be a head title in a newspaper. Very often journals announce their news in these form).
2) Ital. Giù le gambe dal tavolo ! (imperat.)

Actually, non verbal predication is known in many languages: see above all Kees Hengeveld, Non verbal predication. De Gruyter. And look in Google at "non-verbal predication" for further literature.

Best,
Paolo

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Il giorno dom 27 set 2020 alle ore 07:24 Alex Francois <alex.francois.cnrs at gmail.com<mailto:alex.francois.cnrs at gmail.com>> ha scritto:
dear Ian,

> I wonder if there has been any literature on the construction where there is no verb, but only an NP and a PP
Interesting question.
In English, those constructions are particular:  they are arguably elliptical in some way, exclamative – or hortative – rather than declarative…

Yet in many languages, including from the Oceanic (Austronesian) family, a construction {NP + PP} is simply the normal syntax for a declarative statement, where the PP is the predicate itself.

Thus Mwotlap (Oceanic; Banks, Vanuatu) would have this:
 (square brackets = limits of the predicate phrase)
(1)  Imam    mino   [mi   tēytēybē].
     father  my     with doctor
        “My father is/was with the doctor.”

(2)  na-tan̄   nōnōm  [lelo   siok].
     Art-bag  your   inside  canoe
        “Your bag is in the canoe.”

Likewise, Araki (Oceanic; Santo, Vanuatu) says:

(3)  Sari   nene   [m̈ar̄a  m̈aji].
     spear  this    for   fish
        “This spear is for fish.”  (i.e. it's designed for fishing)

Teanu  (Oceanic ; Temotu, Solomons) would have:

(4)  Datilu   [pe   Iura].
     3dual    from  Vanuatu
        “They were from Vanuatu.”

These are all prepositional predicates, translated in English as BE + prep.  (is with, is in, is for, were from…)
Their syntax is typical of languages of the "omnipredicative" type (cf. Launey 1994 about Nāhuatl),  languages where the predicate slot can be headed by various lexical classes  —  unlike European languages, where the predicative function in declarative statements is basically restricted to verbs.

Those languages which, like European languages, restrict predicativity to the class of verbs, need a copula (like a verb BE) to turn non-predicative phrases into a predicate:  with > "I was with them";   happy > "she is happy";  rice > "this is rice";   home > "we were home".

This operation (turning a non-pred phrase into a predicate) is arguably the main function of copulas (cf. Lemaréchal 1989, 1997);  this is the raison d'être of être.
In omnipredicative languages, words like with, happy, rice and home would simply head the predicate, making the whole copula operation superfluous.  This is why a typical property of omnipredicative languages is to lack a verb Be in the first place.

NB:  in languages where the predicate is clause-initial, you will have the reverse order {PP NP}.  Example in Tahitian:

(5)  [Nō   tō'u  fenua]   teie  mā'a.
     from  my    country  this  food
        “This food is from my country.”

Here again, the preposition (nō) is the head of the predicate.

Some references:

  *   Launey, Michel. 1994. Une grammaire omniprédicative: Essai sur la morphosyntaxe du nahuatl classique. Sciences du Langage, Paris: CNRS.
  *   Lemaréchal, Alain. 1989. Les parties du discours, Syntaxe et sémantique. Linguistique Nouvelle. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
  *   —— 1997. Zéro(s). Linguistique Nouvelle. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.
  *   François, Alexandre. 2005. Diversité des prédicats non verbaux dans quelques langues océaniennes. In Jacques François & Irmtraud Behr, Les constituants prédicatifs et la diversité des langues. Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique de Paris. Louvain: Peeters. 179-197.
  *   —— 2017. The economy of word classes in Hiw, Vanuatu: Grammatically flexible, lexically rigid. In Eva van Lier (ed.), Lexical Flexibility in Oceanic Languages. Special issue of Studies in Language. 41 (2): 294–357.
__________

I realise that these Oceanic constructions look perfectly parallel to your English examples [Your legs off the table!], and yet the syntactic similarity is only superficial.
The contrast – whether syntactic, semantic or pragmatic – is worth exploring.

best
Alex

Alex François

LaTTiCe<http://www.lattice.cnrs.fr/en/alexandre-francois/> — CNRS–<http://www.cnrs.fr/index.html>ENS<https://www.ens.fr/laboratoire/lattice-langues-textes-traitements-informatiques-et-cognition-umr-8094>–Sorbonne nouvelle<http://www.univ-paris3.fr/lattice-langues-textes-traitements-informatiques-cognition-umr-8094-3458.kjsp>
Australian National University<https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/francois-a>
Academia page<https://cnrs.academia.edu/AlexFran%C3%A7ois> – Personal homepage<http://alex.francois.online.fr/>

On Fri, 25 Sep 2020 at 23:07, JOO, Ian [Student] <ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk<mailto:ian.joo at connect.polyu.hk>> wrote:
Dear all,

I wonder if there has been any literature on the construction where there is no verb, but only an NP and a PP, such as:

(1) Superman to the rescue!
(2) Your legs off the table!

Of course, not only in English, but in any language. I would appreciate your help.

From Hong Kong,
Ian
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