Inclined to Agree
From Pronominal Copula to Predicative Agreement
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18148/hs/2025.v9i2-10.215Keywords:
copula cycle, pronominal copulas, predicative agreement, non-verbal predication, syntactic reanalysis, grammaticalisationAbstract
While the well-attested Pronominal Copula Cycle has been explored from both typological and formal perspectives (Li & Thompson 1977, Katz 1996, Stassen 2003, van Gelderen 2011), this paper expands on this diachronic pathway by investigating the relationship between fully-agreeing pronominal copulas and person-sensitive predicative agreement morphology, illustrating each stage of the cycle with a range of genetically and geographically diverse languages. In doing so, it identifies the morphosyntactic parameters along which pronominal copulas differ cross-linguistically and provides a synchronic and diachronic account thereof. In particular, it is proposed that whether a language innovates a fully-agreeing, deficient, or invariant copula depends on its treatment of radically underspecified 3SG resumptive pronouns in surface-ambiguous left-dislocation constructions. The types of variation attested in this expanded cycle are furthermore shown to evoke the appearance of gradience in grammatical change both within a given paradigm and across categories, with theoretical implications for the representation of phi-features, the relationship between reduction and linearisation, and the nature of non-canonical or fossilised case-marking.Downloads
Published
2025-02-04 — Updated on 2025-02-06
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- 2025-02-06 (2)
- 2025-02-04 (1)
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DiGS23 special issue
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Copyright (c) 2025 Tamisha L. Tan

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