SMALL CLAUSES RECONSIDERED REVISITED: NOT SO SMALL AND NOT ALL ALIKE, AND FAR FEWER

• Authors: Linde-Usiekniewicz J.
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The purpose of the present paper is to discuss some syntactic and semantic phenomena related to the use of 'to' in copular sentences, e.g. 'Jan to mój najlepszy przyjaciel' (John is my best friend//My best friend is John). Two different kinds of analyses are proposed for 'to' in such sentences: according to one of them 'to' is a pronoun, and according to the other it is a special kind of predicate. In our search for arguments in favour of the second we present some less common copular sentences with 'to' to show that whenever the sentence is tensed (by means of an auxiliary-like 'byc' (to be), some agreement phenomena occur, mainly, agreement of the auxiliary with the post-copular noun phrase in terms of person, number and gender, that seem to favour the verbal hipotesis. We also show that 'copular 'to'+auxiliary' can and should be distinguished from ordinary copular sentences with emphatic to particle. Moreover, we show that copular 'to' can combine with its homonymous neutral form of the demonstrative ten. Our examples seem to confirm the predicative hypothesis. However, this analysis is far from complete. Also, we cannot as yet account for some similarities and differences between the copular 'to' and introductory 'to', as in 'To sa dokumenty' (It is documents), in particular those related to a possibility of coordinating clauses containing either 'to' and another clause.

Keywords

EN

PREDICATE STRUCTURE; SMALL CLAUSE

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Poznańskie Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk
• Journal: Lingua Posnaniensis
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 49
• Pages: 83-91
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Linde-Usiekniewicz J.

• J. Linde-Usiekniewicz, Uniwersytet Warszawski, Katedra Jezykoznawstwa Ogólnego, ul.Krakowskie Przedmiescie 26/28, 00-927 Warszawa, Poland

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

08PLAAAA04939386