Specification, equation, and agreement in copular sentences

Abstract

This article presents new data from a number of Germanic languages concerning the agreement patterns found in copular clauses that contain two nominais; in both clauses with specificational readings (such as The problem is your parents) and those with what are here termed readings of assumed identity (such as If I were you or In my dream I was you). It is argued that the specificational sentences involve asymmetric equative structures where one nominal is interpreted as in a concealed question, and that the cross-linguistic differences in agreement patterns found in the languages considered follow from the copula lexicalizing either Tense or a lower head.

(Morpho)syntactic Variation in Agreement: Specificational Copular Clauses Across Germanic

“…This proposal is still compatible with the syntactic "inversion" analysis schematized in (25), as a concealed question denotation can be shifted into a predicative interpretation (in the sense that it can combine with an argument of type e to yield a proposition) just like other definite descriptions, as discussed in Heycock (2012). The possibility of inversion will be important in the discussion to follow, but the precise nature of the semantic contribution of the first nominal will not be important here, so we will not be discussing it further.…”

“…e. Is there evidence for Number and Person being distinct probes and heads in any/all of the languages in question? This question is particularly relevant for Icelandic, as the existence of distinct probes and heads for Number and Person in this language has previously been argued for on the basis of the agreement pattern in dativenominative configurations in cases like (6) above (see Sigurðsson and Holmberg, 2008) f. It was observed in Heycock (2012) that in Faroese, DP1 agreement is strongly favored if the finite verb precedes both DPs. Is this pattern replicated in other V2 languages?…”

“…Based on our work on production of number agreement in Faroese and Icelandic (Heycock, 2009(Heycock, , 2012Heycock, 2016, 2017), rating of person agreement in Icelandic (Hartmann and Heycock, 2018d), rating and production of person agreement in Faroese (Hartmann and Heycock, 2018e), rating and production of number agreement in Dutch and German (Hartmann and Heycock, 2018b) and rating and production of person agreement in Dutch (Hartmann and Heycock, 2019), we have arrived at the following answers to the questions raised in (33): (40) a. All four languages allow DP2 agreement both for number and for person.…”

“…An alternative proposal for the interpretation of the initial nominal is that it is a concealed question, an interpretation available to definite descriptions in cases like (26) (Romero, 2005;Heycock, 2012):…”

“…For some further discussion see Heycock (2012) Such cases, and the agreement patterns that are found there, are discussed in Hartmann and Heycock (2018a). A reviewer points out that for speakers of varieties of English where collective nouns like council are unambiguously singular, other exceptions would be examples like (ii):…”