[draft – for Noncanonical Predication workshop]

• Main Authors: Mark C. Baker, Nadya Vinokurova
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Sakha
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.571.1873; http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~mabaker/predication-in-Sakha.pdf

Abstract: There have been debates in the literature about which lexical categories are intrinsically predicates in which languages. A long-standing tradition in both syntax and semantics claims that all lexical categories—verbs, nouns, and adjectives—can be predicates in themselves, whereas Chierchia (1998) says that nouns are predicates in some languages but not others. In contrast to both of these views, Baker (2003) claims that only verbs are intrinsically predicates; nouns and adjectives can function as predicates only by combining with a predicative functional category, called Pred. Baker’s view fits well with the fact that copular verbs and particles must be used with predicate nominals and adjectives but not with verbs in many languages (Chris *(is) a linguist, Chris *(is) tall, but Chris works). But the distribution of copular elements is complex and highly variable across languages, and this can be used to challenge Baker’s view and support alternatives. For example, the Turkic language Sakha has a set of environments in which a copular verb must be used with a predicative nominal, but not with a predicative adjective or a verb. These environments include embedded clausal complements, immediate past tense sentences, and relative clauses, among others. Vinokurova 2005 uses data like these to argue that adjectives are like verbs and unlike nouns in that they are intrinsically predicative, at least in Sakha and perhaps in all languages. In this paper, we develop an alternative analysis of these facts which is consistent with Baker’s approach to lexical categories. In particular, we propose that, whenever a copula is needed with a nominal predicate but not an adjectival one in Sakha, this is to fulfill the Distinctness condition of Richards 2006.