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3 a Typology of Sumerian Copular Clauses36 3 A Typology of Sumerian Copular Clauses36 3.1 Introduction CCs may be classified according to a number of characteristics. Jagersma (2010, pp. 687-705) gives a detailed description of Sumerian CCs arranged according to the types of constituents that may function as S or PC. Jagersma’s description is the most detailed one ever written about CCs in Sumerian, and particularly, the parts on clauses with a non-finite verbal form as the PC are extremely insightful. Linguistic studies on CCs, however, discuss the kind of constituents in CCs only in connection with another kind of classification which appears to be more relevant to the description of CCs. This classification is based on the semantic properties of CCs, which in turn have a profound influence on their grammatical and pragmatic properties. In this chapter I will give a description of CCs based mainly on the work of Renaat Declerck (1988) (which itself owes much to Higgins [1979]), and Mikkelsen (2005). My description will also take into account the information structure of CCs. Information structure is understood as “a phenomenon of information packaging that responds to the immediate communicative needs of interlocutors” (Krifka, 2007, p. 13). CCs appear to be ideal for studying the role information packaging plays in Sumerian grammar. Their morphology and structure are much simpler than the morphology and structure of clauses with a non-copular finite verb, and there is a more transparent connection between their pragmatic characteristics and their structure. 3.2 The Classification of Copular Clauses in Linguistics CCs can be divided into three main types on the basis of their meaning: predicational, specificational, and equative. First, I will describe the properties of the predicational and specificational clauses, as they are often discussed together, contrasting their features. Equatives, a minor type, will be discussed at the end of this subsection. In predicational CCs, the PC predicates a property about a referential S. This prop- erty can be a characteristic, a role or a class membership. Typically the S of predica- tional clauses is a definite, referential NP, while its complement is an adjective or a non-referential NP: 36 An abbreviated version of this chapter was published as Zólyomi (2012). © 2014 Gábor Zólyomi This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. 28 A Typology of Sumerian Copular Clauses (49) Susan is nice. (50) John is a teacher. A specificational clause does not predicate a property of the S. It does something fun- damentally different; it identifies the referent of a description by naming it. In more technical language, it specifies the value of a variable. The specificational clause in (51) below specifies the value “John Thomas” for the variable “the X who is the bank robber”, i.e., it tells us that the referent characterized here as “the bank robber” is nobody else but “John Thomas”. (51) The bank robber is John Thomas. Specificational clauses may also be thought of as lists (an idea of Higgins [1979]): the S functions as the heading of the list, while the predicate specifies what makes up the list. Stefan Huber’s (2000) less metaphoric reformulation of this characterization is paraphrased by Katalin É. Kiss as follows: “... in specificational sentences the subject denotes a set, which the predicate characterizes through another set, by listing the individuals that make it up. A specificational predicate implies that its specification of the individuals that make up the set denoted by the subject is exhaus- tive, that is, other alternatives are excluded. The subject of predication is associated with an existential presupposition – because only the content of an existing set can be listed.” (É. Kiss, 2006, p. 181) The S of English specificational clauses is characterized variously as “weakly” refe- rential (Declerck, 1983, pp. 217-218), attributive (Donnellan, 1975), or non-referential (Mikkelsen, É. Kiss, etc.). Mikkelsen’s characterization is based on the idea that definite NPs may have dif- ferent interpretations depending on the properties of the clause in which they are used (2005, pp. 53-54). A definite NP may be interpreted as referential, then it denotes an individual; or it may be interpreted as predicative, then it denotes a set of individu- als. The difference between these interpretations can be demonstrated with sentence- pairs like (52) and (53) below. In (52) the NP “the tallest girl in the class” refers to an individual. In (53), however, the same NP is interpreted as a property, namely the set of individuals that have the property of being “the tallest girl in the class”. Her main argument comes from pronominalization. In particular, she argues that in (52) and (53) “the use of it indicates that the subject is not referential, but rather denotes a property, whereas the use of she indicates that the subject is referential” (Mikkelsen, 2005, p. 64). (52) The tallest girl in the class is Swedish, isn’t {she / *it }? (predicational) A Typology of Sumerian Copular Clauses 29 (53) The tallest girl in the class is Molly, isn’t {it / *she }? (specificational) If the subject NP of English specificational clauses denotes properties, i.e. has a pre- dicative interpretation, then it is plausible to assume that specificational clauses are a kind of predicate inversion in which the subject NP denotes a property (cf. Mikkelsen, 2005, pp. 133-161). By contrast, it is the PC that denotes a property in predicational clauses. There exist languages in which this assumption is supported by the agree- ment pattern in specificational sentences. As the sentence pair (54) and (55) show, the predicate and the S are inverted in Italian specificational clauses, but the copula does not agree with the preposed predicate but with the now postcopular S (examples adapted from Moro, 1997, p. 28, ex. 33). A similar pattern characterizes specificational clauses in Russian (Geist, 2003, pp. 95-99), and, anticipating the results of the next subsection, in Sumerian. (54) The pictures of the wall {*was / were} the cause of the riot. (predicational) Le foto del muro {*fu/ furono} la causa della rivolta. (predicational) (55) The cause of the riot {was / *were} the pictures of the wall. (specifiational) La cause della rivolta {*fu / furono} le foto del muro. (specifiational) There is an important difference between predicational and specificational CCs in terms of information structure which is highly relevant for the description of Sume- rian CCs. Specificational clauses have a fixed information structure: the value NP always functions as the identificational focus of the clause, while the variable part is its presupposition. In this work the term focus will always be understood as identificational focus,37 unless otherwise qualified: “An identificational focus represents a subset of the set of contextually or situationally given elements for which the predicate phrase can potentially hold; it is identified as the exhaustive subset of this set for which the predicate phrase actually holds” (É. Kiss, 1998, p. 245) Or, in other words, “[i]t indicates that the focus denotation is the only one that leads to a true proposition” (Krifka, 2007, p. 33). As a corollary of their fixed information structure, specificational clauses may always be paraphrased as it-clefts in English: (56) It is John Thomas who is the bank robber. 37 Other terms in use are narrow focus, argument focus (Lambrecht, 1994) and exhaustive focus ( Krifka, 2007). 30 A Typology of Sumerian Copular Clauses In predicational clauses, however, either the S or the predicate may be the focus (pitch accent is marked here with small capitals), or neither of them (cf. ex. [50] above). (57) John is a teacher (, and not a butcher). (58) John is a teacher (, and not Mark). The third type of CCs is the equative. An equative CC asserts that two NPs have the same referent. Both NPs refer to an individual. Equative clauses do not have fixed information structure either. (59) She is Laura. (60) Mark Twain is Samuel Clemens. 3.3 Copular Clauses in Sumerian Languages of the world may use syntactic (e.g., word order), morphological or pro- sodic means, or some combination of these, to mark the information structure of clauses. In the case of a dead language without native speakers, preserved only in written sources, one has limited opportunities to recover and reconstruct its informa- tion structure. The following discussion relies solely on features that are observable in our written texts, aided with the findings of linguistic research.38 A basic assumption of this work is that Sumerian is a language in which word order is determined by information structure. Sumerian is a verb-final language, and the order of the other constituents shows a great degree of variation with some fre- quent patterns. Since word order is a feature that is clear and unambiguous in most of our texts, it will be the most important characteristic of CCs used for the reconstruc- tion of their information structure. A common syntactic device that involves a variation in word order is left-dislo- cation of possessors in Sumerian.39 In this construction the possessor of a genitive construction is left-dislocated. The left-dislocated possessor occupies a position at the beginning of the clause and is as a rule in the genitive case; a resumptive enclitic 38 See also Christian Huber’s (2000, pp. 96-100) remarks about the problems involved in recovering the information structure of Sumerian. His results are in agreement with the findings of the present work. 39 See Zólyomi (2005) for a description of left-dislocated possessors in Sumerian. Left-dislocation of the possessor is referred to as the “anticipatory genitive” in Assyriology. A Typology of Sumerian Copular Clauses 31 possessive pronoun is attached to the possessum which agrees in gender, person, and number with the possessor.
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