The syntax and semantics of Swedish copular sentences: a comparative perspective

The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics ◽

10.1007/s10828-020-09121-1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Kajsa Djärv

Keyword(s):

Comparative Studies ◽

Structural Difference ◽

Publishing Company ◽

Recent Case ◽

Nominative Case ◽

Individual Level ◽

Distributional Properties ◽

Copular Sentences ◽

Semantic Dimension ◽

Inversion Analysis

AbstractThis paper investigates the (recent) case alternation in Swedish equative and predicational copular sentences (‘Cicero is Tully’, ‘Cicero is a nice guy’). A central contribution of the paper is showing that this alternation is an LF-phenomenon, contra Sigurðsson (in: Hartmann, Molnárfi (eds) Comparative studies in Germanic syntax: from Afrikaans to Zurich German. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 2006) who conjectures that Swedish is changing in the direction of English and Danish, where all postcopular DPs receive Accusative case, regardless of interpretation. The Swedish alternation is shown to track the same semantic dimension that conditions the choice of predicate case in languages like Polish, Russian and Dutch, namely the distinction between stage and individual level predication. Interestingly, the Swedish alternation is also shown to share distributional properties with the predicate case alternations in these languages. To account for these observations, I propose that the morphological and semantic contrasts between the two alternants are mediated by a structural difference, such that Nominative case involves a biclausal structure, and Accusative a monoclausal structure. This paper further adds to the typological picture, showing that Swedish patterns like Polish, Russian and Dutch, but unlike English and Danish, not just in terms of equative and predicational sentences, but also in specificational copular sentences (‘The fastest runner here is Lisa’). I argue that a particular kind of predicate inversion analysis is required to account for the Swedish type of specification.

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(Anti)Fascism and Superhero Comics: An Anthropological Examination of Innovativeness in Comic Books as Exemplified by "V for Vendetta"

Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology ◽

10.21301/eap.v15i4.5 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 15 (4) ◽

Author(s):

Miloš Zarić

Keyword(s):

Comic Books ◽

Graphic Novels ◽

Comic Book ◽

Individual Level ◽

Semiotic Model ◽

The Individual ◽

Semantic Dimension ◽

Alan Moore ◽

The Way ◽

V For Vendetta

The paper analyzes the V for Vendetta comic books, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd. These volumes are graphic novels whose characteristics place them in the literary genre of the critical dystopia, but they have also been associated with the genre of the superhero comic, which, according to a number of authors including Alan Moore, is inextricably linked to the ideology and practice of the political right, which in its extreme form assumes the form of fascism. The way that fascism is treated in that work, as well as in two other comics discussed in the paper (Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns), is linked to the way in which the process of creativity/innovativeness functioned in the context of the revision/deconstruction of the superhero comic book genre in the 1980s, both on the collective (intra-genre) and the individual level, on the level of the thought structure of the British writer Alan Moore. Using the structural-semiotic model of analysis, the paper seeks to fathom the logic of this deconstruction procedure "broken down" into the three comic books discussed in the paper, with particular emphasis on the analysis of V for Vendetta, with the aim of establishing its "hidden", connotative semantic dimension. The study adopts a modern view of the comic book according to which the essence of this medium, which distinguishes it from other narrative and graphic forms of expression as well as from film, can be recognized in the specific, sequential way of combining its visual and narrative components, thus generating meanings whose interpretation depends on the intention of the author but also on the view of the reader.

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Aspectual composition in "ser/estar + adjective" structures: adjectival scalarity and verbal aspect in copular constructions

Borealis – An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics ◽

10.7557/1.1.1.2321 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 33 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Silvia Gumiel ◽

Isabel Pérez-Jiménez

Keyword(s):

Font Size ◽

Verbal Aspect ◽

Individual Level ◽

Distributional Properties ◽

Scalar Properties ◽

Syntactic Context

The distribution of the Spanish copulas ser and estar (‘be’) (specifically in the syntactic context <ser/estar + A>) has been generally accounted for in the literature in aspectual terms, more explicitly, in terms of the distinction between individual-level and stage-level predicates. Our claim is that the distributional properties of adjectives in the <ser/estar + A> structure can be better described if the scalar properties of the adjectives are taken into account, crucially those properties related to the relative vs. absolute distinction (in the sense of Kennedy & McNally 2005): relative adjectives combine with ser, absolute adjectives combine with estar. From this hypothesis, a better theory arises about aspectual composition in the domain of stative predications (in the line of Husband 2010, 2012).

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Copular sentences expressing Kimian states in Irish and Russian

The Canadian Journal of Linguistics / La revue canadienne de linguistique ◽

10.1017/s0008413100002322 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 57 (3) ◽

pp. 341-358 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Gréte Dalmi

Keyword(s):

Actual World ◽

The Other ◽

Functional Layer ◽

Individual Level ◽

Alternative State ◽

Copular Sentences ◽

Secondary Predicates ◽

Event Variable ◽

Temporal Variable ◽

Central Claim

AbstractThe central claim of this article is that the D(avidsonian)-state vs. K(imian)-state distinction established for German and Spanish by Maienborn is of wider crosslinguistic relevance. Stage-level and individual-level secondary predicates are both viewed here as K-states as they contain only a Kimian temporal variable but no Davidsonian event variable. Secondary predicates expressing a K-state may acquire the temporary/actual property interpretation when an alternative state entailment is added to them. In such cases the functional layer of the BE-predicate contains a syntactic operator (OPalt) that can bind the Kimian temporal variable in accessible worlds. If no such entailment is added, the same temporal variable is bound by the T0 functional head of the BE-predicate in the actual world. The auxiliary tá/bhí ‘be’ in Irish imposes the semantic restriction that its secondary predicate must contain the alternative state entailment. The copula is/ba ‘be’, on the other hand, is used in the absence of such an entailment. Case obviation on the secondary predicate head in Russian copular sentences signals alternative state entailment, while case agreement on the secondary predicate appears in the absence of this entailment.

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What does it take to be a copula?

Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting ◽

10.1515/yplm-2016-0001 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 1-28 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Gréte Dalmi

Keyword(s):

Ad Hoc ◽

Functional Layer ◽

Individual Level ◽

Scope Ambiguity ◽

Alternative State ◽

Verbal Predicate ◽

Dream Narratives ◽

Copular Sentences ◽

The Individual ◽

Jamaican Creole

Abstract This paper argues that copular sentences without an overt copular predicate do project a VP with a phonologically null head, hence so-called “verbless” copular sentences are illusory. Data from Standard Arabic, Spanish, Maltese, Russian, Jamaican Creole, Finnish and Hungarian copular sentences are used to support this claim. It is also claimed here that variation between the habitual property vs. ad hoc property interpretations (traditionally called the individual level vs. stage level distinction) of non-verbal predicates found in copular sentences is closely related to the choice of the copula in multiple BE-system languages. Whilst the current accounts explain this variation by introducing an abstract aspectual operator or an incorporated abstract preposition in the functional layer of the copular predicate, the present proposal derives these interpretive differences from the presence or absence of an OPalt alternative state operator, which can bind the temporal variable of non-verbal predicates in two ways. Negation and temporal adverbials show scope ambiguity in copular sentences. They either take scope over the whole proposition or only over the non-verbal predicate. Such interpretive differences are demonstrated in Russian and Hungarian in Section 4 of this paper, however, they are taken to be valid cross-linguistically. These amibiguities cannot be explained under the “verbless copular sentence” account but fall out naturally from the “zero copula” analysis. The “alternative state” approach can be extended to dream narratives and other nonveridical contexts, which serve as alternative triggers. The existing analyses have nothing to say about such contexts.

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Russisch byt' ('sein') als funktionale und/oder lexikalische Kategorie

ZAS Papers in Linguistics ◽

10.21248/zaspil.14.1999.3 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 14 ◽

pp. 1-39

Author(s):

Ljudmila Geist

Keyword(s):

Lexical Entry ◽

Functional Category ◽

Case Alternation ◽

Individual Level ◽

Base Position ◽

Present Tense ◽

Copular Sentences ◽

Temporal Modifiers ◽

Semantic Distinction

The present study offers an analysis of the Russian copular constructions with predicate nominals. In such copular sentences two cases may mark the predicate: the nominative and the instrumental as in 'Anna byla medsestra/medsestroj' - 'Anna was-3sg.fem.a nursenom/instr'. In the present tense the copula has a null-form and the predicate nominal can only be in the nominative. I argue that the case alternation corresponds to the distinction of Stage Level and Individual Level Predicates in the sense of Kratzer (1994) and Diesing (1992), but with some objections. The copula with Instrumental forms S-Predicates, which are analyzed as predicates applying to situations referring to time. The copula with nominative forms I-Predicates, which attribute properties to individuals without referring to time. I-Predicates have no situation argument. Data that show the (in-)compatibility of copular sentences with certain spatial or temporal modifiers provide a reason to assume a situation argument in byt' + Instr but not in byt' + Nom. Byt' behaves differently in different grammatical contexts: in contexts of sentence negation, yes/no-questions and under focus byt' + Instr behaves like a lexical category, while byt' + Nom behaves like a functional category. As a functional category byt' + Nom is non-overt in the present and is always finite. The semantic distinction between nominative and instrumental predicate NPs is pegged to an opposition between a structure with a functional copula as the only tense and agreement marker with base position in TP and a lexical copula in VP (Franks 1995, Bailyn&Rubin 1991). To explain phenomena of the copula in Russian I propose an integrated syntactic model for two copulas. The two copulas may be conceived as distinct realizations of one verbal lexical entry which will be specified as a lexical or as functional category in the course of lexical insertion. The Model of Parallel Morphology might be used to explain this phenomenon.

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