Predicates and their Subjects is an in-depth study of the syntax-semantics interface focusing on the structure of the subject-predicate relation. Starting from where the author's 1983 dissertation left off, the book argues that there is syntactic constraint that clauses (small and tensed) are constructed out of a one-place unsaturated expression, the predicate, which must be applied to a syntactic argument, its subject. The author shows that this predication relation cannot be reduced to a thematic relation or a projection of argument structure, but must be a purely syntactic constraint. Chapters in the book show how the syntactic predication relation is semantically interpreted, and how the predication relation explains constraints on DP-raising and on the distribution of pleonastics in English. The second half of the book extends the theory of predication to cover copular constructions; it includes an account of the structure of small clauses in Hebrew, of the use of `be' in predicative and identity sentences in English, and concludes with a study of the meaning of the verb `be'.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
1: Why subject is a grammatical concept. - 1. 1 Aristotelian assumptions. - 1. 2 Aboutness. - 1. 3 Pivots and the semantic prominence of subjects. - 1. 4 The structural nature of the subject. - 1. 5 Conclusions and directions. - 1. 6 Appendix: some theoretical preliminaries. - I: The Syntax of Predication. - 2: The grammatical theory of predication. - 3: The syntactic properties of subjects. - 4: Predication as a thematic relation. - 5: The syntactic forms of predication. - II: The Semantics of Predication. - 6: Interpretation. - 7: The semantics of pleonastics. - III: The Syntax and Semantics of Copular Constructions. - 8: Predication structures in Modern Hebrew identity constructions. - 9: Copular constructions in English. - IV: The Copula. - 10: The meaning of `Be .
