Copular Sentences, Predication and Cyclic Agree: a Comparative Approach

This monograph investigates copular sentences in multiple BE-system languages within a cartographic syntactic framework (Rizzi 1997, 2004, 2006). Copular construction are analyzed as biclausal Raising constructions cros-linguistically, in which the primary predicate BE (whether it is verbal, pronominal,zero, or dual) selects a small clause complement. Case-marked small clauses are accounted for via Cyclic Agree in the sense of Bejar & Rezac (2009). The primary predicate has a rich C-domain, where the constituents of the small clause move depending on discourse-semantic factors. Languages, where copular sentences contain a pronominal, zero or dual copula can be integrated in the system of mutiple BE-languages.