[Lingtyp] verbless predications

Sun Aug 11 15:36:14 UTC 2024

Dear Colleagues,

I would like to add some references:

Bertinetto, Pier Marco, Luca Ciucci & Margherita Farina 2019. Two types of morphologically expressed non-verbal predication. Studies in Language 43(1).     120–194.

Chappell, Hilary & Denis Creissels. 2019. Topicality and the typology of predicative possession. Linguistic Typology 23(3). 467–532.

Creissels, Denis. 2019a. Inverse locational predication in typological perspective. Italian Journal of Linguistics 31(2). 38–106.

Creissels, Denis. 2019b. Existential predication in the languages of the Sudanic belt. Afrikanistik-Aegyptologie-Online. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0009-10-48607

Creissels, Denis. 2022. A typological rarum in Mande languages: Argument-predicate reversal in nominal predication. Mandenkan 68. 3–42.

Creissels, Denis. 2023. Existential predication and have-possessive constructions in the languages of the world. In Laure Sarda & Ludovica Lena (eds.), Existential constructions across languages: Forms, meanings and functions. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 34–67.

Creissels, Denis. 2024a. Predicative possession in Bantu languages. In Eva-Marie Bloom Ström, Hannah Gibson, Rozenn Guérois & Lutz Marten (eds.), Morphosyntactic variation in Bantu. Oxford University Press. 184-214.

Creissels, Denis. 2024b. Predicative possession: Typology and diachrony. Paper presented at the University of Potsdam, July 10, 2024. Available at: https://www.uni-potsdam.de/fileadmin/projects/slavistik-slavische-sprachwissenschaft/migrated_contents/predicative_possession_typology_and_diachrony__corrected_.pdf

Creissels, Denis. Forthcoming. ‘Be/have’ verbs in historical perspective. To appear in: Basile, Rodolfo, Josefina Budzisch & Chris Lasse Däbritz (eds.). Locative and existential predication – Core and periphery. Berlin: Language Science Press.

Eriksen, Pål Kristian. 2011. ‘To not be’ or not ‘to not be’: The typology of negation of non-verbal predicates. Studies in Language 35(2). 275–310.

Loprieno, Antonio, Matthias Müller & Sami Uljas. 2017. Non-verbal predication in Ancient Egyptian (The Mouton Companions to Ancient Egyptian 2). Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.

Mazzitelli, Lidia Federica. 2015. The expression of predicative possession in Belarusian and Lithuanian. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.

Moro, Andrea. 1997. The raising of predicates. Predicative noun phrases and the theory of clause structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nordlinger, Rachel & Louisa Sadler. 2007. Verbless clauses: Revealing the structure within. In Annie Zaenen, Jane Simpson, Tracy Holloway King, Jane Grimshaw, Joan Maling & Chris Manning (eds.), Architecture, rules and preferences: Variations on themes by Joan Bresnan, 139–160. CSLI Publications.

Roy, Isabelle 2013. Nonverbal predication: Copular sentences at the syntax-semantics interface. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Veselinova, Ljuba. 2013. Negative existentials: A cross-linguistic study. Italian Journal of Linguistics 25(1). 107–145.

Finally, Pier Marco Bertinetto, Denis Creissels and I have been working on a volume on non-verbal predication, which should appear soon:
Bertinetto, Pier Marco, Luca Ciucci & Denis Creissels (eds.) (forthcoming 2024/2025). Non-verbal predication in the world’s languages: A typological survey (Comparative Handbooks of Linguistics 9). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
If anyone is interested, we would be happy to privately share the current version of the introductory chapter.

All the best

Luca Ciucci (also on behalf of Pier Marco Bertinetto and Denis Creissels)
________________________________
From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of William Croft via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Sent: 09 August 2024 06:17
To: Sergey Loesov <sergeloesov at gmail.com>
Cc: Nigel Vincent via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] verbless predications

This message was sent from someone external to JCU. Please do not click links or open attachments unless you recognise the source of this email and know the content is safe.

Stassen’s Predicative Possession (as valuable as his Intransitive Possession) shows that ‘Have’ possession -- a transitive predicate strategy with possessor as the subject-like argument and possessum as object-like argument -- is found throughout the world (pp. 64-69). Also, intransitive strategies for encoding predicative possession often are reanalyzed as the transitive ‘Have’ strategy, a phenomenon that Stassen calls ‘Have-drift’ and discusses in chapter 6 of his book.

Best wishes,
Bill

Stassen, Leon. 2009. Predicative possession. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

On Aug 8, 2024, at 2:03 PM, Sergey Loesov via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> wrote:

My naïve feeling is that the finite verb HAVE is best known from Romance and Germanic. It is absent from Semitic, at least part of Slavic (Russian, eastern dialects of Ukrainian), Turkish, Kurdish (at least Kurmanji), etc.

On Thu, 8 Aug 2024 at 21:51, Martin Haspelmath via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>> wrote:

There is, incidentally, an interesting terminological question concerning what we regard as "verbless/nonverbal". What about (1) and (2), for example?

(1) We have enough money.

(2) (German): Auf dem Tisch liegt ein Buch [on the table lies a book] 'There is a book on the table'

Do predpossessive sentences like (1) generally fall under "nonverbal predication", or only when they do not include a "verb"? Is English "have" a verb in this sense? But what about "copula verbs"? Aren't they "verbal", too?

And what should we say about existential clauses like (2) ('There is a book on the table'), which commonly make use of posture verbs, as in German? Are existential clauses sometimes "verbal" and sometimes "verbless"?

It seems to me that the best way to define terms such as "verbal predication", "existential clause", and "predpossessive clause" is as construction-functions. By contrast, the terms "copula clause" and "transpossessive construction" (= 'have' construction) are best defined as construction-strategies.

(For the contrast between construction(-function)s and (construction-)strategies, see Croft 2022, and my forthcoming paper: https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/007897)

Thus, I would say that (1) and (2) are nonverbal (in a comparative-concept perspective), even though from a language-particular viewpoint, "have" is an English Verb, and "liegen" is a German Verb.

Martin

On 08.08.24 19:30, Spike Gildea via Lingtyp wrote:

I would also suggest:

Mikkelsen, Line. 2011. Copular clauses. In Claudia Maienborn, Klaus von Heusinger, and Paul Portner (eds.) Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning, volume 2, 1805–1829. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Overall, Simon, Rosa Vallejos, & Spike Gildea. 2018. Non-verbal predication in Amazonian languages: Introduction. Nonverbal predication in Amazonian Languages, ed. by Simon Overall, Rosa Vallejos, & Spike Gildea, 1-49. Typological Studies in Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Pustet, Regina. 2003. Copulas: Universals in the categorization of the lexicon. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

And especially:

Stassen, Leon. 1997. Intransitive Predication. Oxford: OUP.

Best,

Spike

From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Christian Lehmann via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Thursday, August 8, 2024 at 1:49 PM
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org><mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] verbless predications

Dear Sergey,

here are some references for nominal clauses:

Clairis, Christos & Chamoreau, Claudine & Costaouec, Denis & Guérin, Françoise (eds.) 2005, Typologie de la syntaxe connective. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes (Rivages linguistiques).

Hengeveld, Kees 1990, "Semantic relations in non-verbal predications." Nuyts, Jan & Bolkestein, A. Machtelt & Vet, Co (eds.), Layers and levels of representation in language theory. A functional view. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: J. Benjamins; 101-122.

Hengeveld, Kees 1992, Non-verbal predication. Theory, typology, diachrony. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Levin, Saul 1978, "Predication through an obligatory copulative verb." LACUS 5:503-509.

Li, Charles N. & Thompson, Sandra A. 1977, "A mechanism for the development of copula morphemes." Li, Charles N. (ed.), Mechanisms of syntactic change. Austin & London: University of Texas Press; 419-444.

Penner, Zvi 1988, The grammar of the nominal sentence. A government-binding approach. Bern: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität (Arbeitspapier, 24).

Pernée, Lucien 1985, "La relation prédicative en grec: phrase nominale et verbe être." Travaux du Cercle Linguistique d'Aix-en-Provence 3:61-75.

Rapoport, Tova R. 1987, Copular, nominal and small clauses. A study of Israeli Hebrew. Cambridge: MIT, Department of Linguistics & Philosophy (Unpubl. PhD dissertation).

Vapnarsky, Valentina 2013, "Is Yucatec Maya an omnipredicative language? Predication, the copula and focus constructions." Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 66:40-86.

Wetzer, Harrie 1992, "`Nouny' and `verby' adjectivals: a typology of predicative adjectival constructions." Kefer, Michel & Van der Auwera (eds.), Meaning and grammar. Cross-linguistic perspectives. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology, 10); 223-262.

Wetzer, Harrie 1996, The typology of adjectival predication. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology, 17).

A topic different from this one are clauses which are missing their verb. This is treated for Latin in

Carvalho, Paulo de 1978, "Syntaxe et sémantique: verbe et phrase en latin." Revue des Études Anciennes 80:239-247.

and for Russian in

Wiemer, Björn 1996, "Klassifikacija nulevyx skazujemyx v russkom jazyke po ix leksičeskim i referencial'nym xarakteristikam." Studia z Filologii Polskiej i Słowańskiej 33:245-273.

Best,

Christian

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