Relators And Linkers ─ The Syntax of Predication, Predicate Inversion, And Copulas

In Relators and Linkers, Marcel den Dikken presents a syntax of predication and theinversion of the predicate around its subject, emphasizing meaningless elements (elements with nosemantic load) that play an essential role in the establishment and syntactic manipulation ofpredication relationships. One such element, the RELATOR, mediates the relationship between apredicate and its subject in the base representation of predication structures. A second, theLINKER, connects the predicate to its subject in Predicate Inversion constructions. Den Dikkenargues that all subject-predicate relationships are syntactically mediated by a RELATOR and thatpredication relationships in syntax are configurationally asymmetrical and non-directional.Discussing the inversion of the predicate around its subject and the distribution of LINKER elementssurfacing between the inverted predicate and the subject, den Dikken presents an in-depth analysisof Predicate Inversion from the perspective of the minimalist theory of locality.Among the featuresby which Relators and Linkers distinguishes itself from past studies of predication is a detailedinvestigation of predication and Predicate Inversion inside the complex nominal phrase that makes acarefully documented case for the existence of two types of qualitative binominal noun phrases, oneexploiting a predicate-specifier structure and the other employing a predicate-complement structurecum Predicate Inversion. Empirical data includes examples not only from English and Dutch but alsofrom Hungarian, Hebrew, French, Italian, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and other languages. DenDikken's analysis, cast in terms of the theory of generative grammar, fruitfully brings Chomskyanminimalist principles to bear on the discussion of predication and Predicate Inversion.

Marcel den Dikken is Professor in the Linguistics Program at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of Particles: On the Syntax of Verb-particle, Triadic, and Causative Constructions and The Structure of the Noun Phrase in Rotuman.