A definition of copular verb

A copula is usually defined as a linking element appearing with non-verbal predicates and their subjects, which can either contribute no meaning to the predicate or carry some of its original (aspectual or modal) meaning, as well as accumulate verbal inflections such as tense, aspect, and mood.⁴⁸

In Germanic languages, posture verbs seem to act as copulas, linking a prepositional phrase to the subject of the predicate. In the case of English, shown in the examples in (87), the posture verbs do not contribute any posture meaning, or manner in a broad sense, but rather help relate the figure (New Orleans, John’s house, the new building, and that argument) to the ground, which locates it in space.

(87) a. New Orleans lies at the mouth of the Mississippi River b. John’s house sits at the top of a hill

c. The new building stands at the corner of First Avenue and Main Street d. That argument rests on an invalid assumption

(Dowty 1979:174, (67))

Interestingly, when posture verbs are used to locate non-human figures, the choice of verb is determined by the geometric properties of this element. Thus, the core meaning of posture verbs is metaphorically extended. Ameka and Levinson (2007) provide the criteria in (88) for English posture verbs specifying the properties that the figure must meet (see also Newman 2002).

(88) a. Stand: when long axis is canonically vertical b. Lie: when long axis is canonically horizontal

c. Sit: when there is no major axis, or object has a wide base in canonical position d. Hang: when not supported from below

Jaume Mateu (p.c.) notes that these definitions are based on the type-B meaning of the verb roots, which holds no relation to the first phase syntax of these verbs. Nevertheless,

48 See Hengeveld 1992, Pustet 2003, van Gelderen 2015, among others, for different approaches to copulas and shortcomings with this prevalent definition.

type-B information seems to conceptually constrain the resulting structure, although it has no syntactic consequences for the first phase syntax of the predicate. In addition, he observes that Talmy’s (1985, 2000) typology of lexicalization patterns mentions Atsugewi, a Hokan language of California, as an instance of a language that conflates motion and figure information in the verb root to express motion or location (see figure 2), in which the physical properties of the figure are relevant for its compatibility with these verbs (89). See Talmy (1985, 2000) for further discussion.

FIGURE 2:MOTION AND FIGURE CONFLATION IN TALMY (2000:57)

(89) Atsugewi verb roots of motion with conflated Figure

-lup- ‘for a small shiny spherical object (e.g., a round candy, an eyeball, a hailstone) to move/be-located’

-t’- ‘for a smallish planar object that can be functionally affixed (e.g., a stamp, a clothing patch, a button, a shingle, a cradle’s sunshade) to move/be-located’

-caq- ‘for a slimy lumpish object (e.g., a toad, a cow dropping) to move/be-located’

-swal- ‘for a limp linear object suspended by one end (e.g., a shirt on a

clothesline, a hanging dead rabbit, a flaccid penis) to move/be-located’

-qput- ‘for loose dry dirt to move/be-located’

-st’aq’- ‘for runny icky material (e.g., mud, manure, rotten tomatoes, guts, chewed gum) to move/be-located’

(Talmy 2000:58, (35))

In the case of posture verbs, even though these elements do not impose selectional restrictions or determine the number of participants, they still contribute semantically to the resulting construction. Hengeveld (1992) notes that this contribution is usually aspectual (ingressive, continuous, progressive, etc.) as is the case with the copula estar

‘be’ in Spanish.⁴⁹ According to Hengeveld, in the case of posture verbs, in addition to the aspectual contribution, which might be called durative, the verbs perform a localizing function. As an example, consider Dutch’s use of posture verbs to convey more than tense, aspect, and mood distinctions. The posture verb zitten ‘sit’ in (90b) does in no way specify the posture of the figure Jan when used in combination with an amount of space such as France, but rather acts as a localizing element, relating the figure to the ground. In contrast, the use of the posture verb in (90a) corresponds to the co-event use described previously since it includes posture information about the figure.

(90) a. Jan zit op de bank Jan sit.PRES.3.SG on DEF sofa ‘Jan is sitting on the sofa’

b. Jan zit in Frankrijk Jan sit.PRES.3.SG in France ‘Jan is in France’

(Hengeveld 1992:238, (3-4))

On the basis of this evidence, we can conclude that posture verbs have at least two stable versions: a full-fledged lexical version and a copular or ‘light’ one. The full-fledged lexical version appears in the causative senses (see chapter 2), the maintain position sense (see section 1.5), and the so-called co-event sense (see section 3), where posture meaning, i.e. type-B meaning, is present across the board. The copular or ‘light’ version corresponds to a smaller set of cases, in which the posture meaning is somewhat fading, thus, allowing that the verbs arw used with inanimate or abstract figures that are not subject to be placed in any particular posture such as in the examples provided by Dowty (1979). This statement concurs with Butt and Lahiri’s (2013) generalization about light verbs, briefly discussed in chapter 1, and their corresponding lexical

49 This use of posture verbs corresponds to what Hengeveld (1992) identifies as semi-copulas. which differ from copulas in that their omission affects the meaning conveyed by the predicate.

counterparts, repeated in (91), which states that light verbs have a concurrent full lexical form, from which they stem.

(91) Butt and Lahiri’s Generalization (Butt and Lahiri 2013)

Unlike auxiliaries which may become grammaticalized over time to have a purely functional use, light verbs always have a diachronically stable corresponding full or “heavy” version in all the languages in which they are found.

(Ramchand 2014:217, (11))

According to Butt & Lahiri, the existence of a common source for main verbs and light verbs explains why both share the same phonetic form (see Figure 3). Nevertheless, they differ in terms of the semantic information they contain. That is, ‘light’ verbs contain a subset of the lexical semantics of the main verb form as well as including other shades of meaning. The semantic content provided by light verbs is mainly related to event semantics such as causation or the existence of result-states, as well as the legitimization of additional event participants such as benefactives or the inclusion of distinctions such as agentive or accidental (see section 4 of this chapter for further discussion). The reduced amount of semantic information contained in light verbs makes them dependent on the presence of a predicative element, in Butt & Lahiri’s terms. Thus, their semantics is reduced to Ramchand’s type-A meaning. In the case of posture verbs in the simple position sense, that information would correspond to the process head, which provides a stage-level unit to the semantics of the verb, whence their aspectual contribution arises. The absence of a result phrase contributes to the unboundedness meaning conveyed by these verbs, which only take a rhematic prepositional phrase.

Finally, the light form of the verb contrasts with the auxiliary form, if there were one, which only applies in the upper layers of the structure that pertain to tense, aspect, and mood information. Butt and Lahiri’s hypothesis is that these forms do not derive from the semantically impoverished light verb but rather from the main verb form.

FIGURE 3:DEVELOPMENT OF LIGHT VERBS (BUTT &LAHIRI 2013)

The next section deals with the process whereby process posture verbs evolve into semantically impoverished forms to function as ‘light’ verbs.