| Description |
The hypothesis that non-verbal predication is obligatorily mediated by a functional element Bowers 1993), is universally accepted in syntax, but has so far not been given a compositional analysis. In this presentation I will argue that this is not incidental and demonstrate that it does not appear to be possible to give a unified semantics to the purported mediator. I will then reevaluate the arguments for the existence of have been drawn from predicative instrumental in Slavic (Bailyn and Rubin 1991, Bailyn and Citko 1999, and Bailyn 2001, 2002), copular particles in Welsh (Bowers 1993) and in other languages (Baker 2003), binominal NPs (den Dikken 1995, Bennis et al. 1998) and from and in a variety of languages (Emonds 1985, Aarts 1992, Bowers 1993, 2001, Eide and , Bailyn 2001, 2002, den Dikken 2006). I will show that none of these phenomena supports the existence of the same functional head in AP, NP and PP small clauses and offer an alternative for the role of different functional elements in small clauses.
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