Predicates and Their Subjects

ISBN-13: 9780792364092 / Angielski / Twarda / 2000 / 352 str.

Susan Rothstein

Opis

Predicates and their Subjects is an in-depth study of the syntax-semantics interface focusing on the structure of the subject-predicate relation. Starting from where the author's 1983 dissertation left off, the book argues that there is syntactic constraint that clauses (small and tensed) are constructed out of a one-place unsaturated expression, the predicate, which must be applied to a syntactic argument, its subject. The author shows that this predication relation cannot be reduced to a thematic relation or a projection of argument structure, but must be a purely syntactic constraint. Chapters in the book show how the syntactic predication relation is semantically interpreted, and how the predication relation explains constraints on DP-raising and on the distribution of pleonastics in English. The second half of the book extends the theory of predication to cover copular constructions; it includes an account of the structure of small clauses in Hebrew, of the use of be' in predicative and identity sentences in English, and concludes with a study of the meaning of the verb be'.

Spis treści

Introduction. 1. Why `subject' is a grammatical concept. Part I: The Syntax of Predication. 2. The grammatical theory of predication. 3. The syntactic properties of subjects. 4. Predication as a thematic relation. 5. The Syntactic Forms of Predication. Part II: The Semantics of Predication. 6. Interpretation. 7. The semantics of pleonastics. Part III: The Syntax and Semantics of Copula Constructions. 8. Predication structures in Modern Hebrew identity constructions. 9. Copular constructions in English. 10. The Meaning of `Be'.