1

The Acquisition of CopulasMisha Becker

22 March 1999

Dissertation Prospectus

0. Introduction: What is the copula and how is it learned?

Children do not acquire the verb be uniformly. Its rate of omission varies with the

particular construction in which it is used. For example, in early English be is omitted frequently in

locative expressions (e.g. Mommy (is) in the kitchen) and adjectival predicatives where the

adjective expresses a temporary property (she (is) sick), but it is largely overt in deictic (there is my

toy), identificational (that is a dog) and existential (there are monkeys in the zoo) expressions, as

well as in nominal predicatives (she is a girl). How can we explain this nonuniformity in terms of

structural properties of expressions involving be?

In reviewing the literature on copular constructions in adult grammar, a couple of properties

of be seem particularly interesting. One is the characterization of be as a raising verb (first

proposed by Stowell 1978). Be is not unique in this respect: in English we have other raising verbs

like seem and appear (they can all host expletive subjects: It seems John is smart, It appears to be

raining)1. These verbs, like be, carry sufficiently little semantic content that they do not assign any

theta roles (Pollock 1989). If a copula is simply a raising verb that doesn't assign theta roles, then

there are several different copulas, even in English. It is obvious from looking at other languages

that languages can have multiple lexical items all translatable in English as 'be'. On the other hand,

be in English is clearly different from other raising verbs. In particular, it is the most "bleached",

or semantically empty verb of this class (even seem and appear imply a sort of evidential

1Unaccusative verbs (like arrive) are likewise thought to raise their single, internal argument to subject position, as

they can also have an expletive subject (there arrived 3 packages). However these verbs assign a theta role to their

internal argument.

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interpretation)2. That is, the meaning of be does not denote properties or events, rather it is a

purely structural entity.

The high degree of semantic "bleaching" of be points to the next interesting property of be:

it is a purely functional item. Heggie (1988) calls it a "verbal operator". The canonical predicate in

a sentence is a VP. Heggie's idea is that be creates a verbal predicate out of any predicate that does

not have a verbal category (i.e. that is not a VP). It is worth noting that in certain polysynthetic

languages, for instance Eskimo, the copula is a suffix that "verbalizes" a nominal or adjectival root.

Seen as a verbal operator, the abstractness of the copula is clear: it lacks semantic content of its

own (it does not refer to an actual event (like run) or state (know)); its function is to create verbal

predicates.

What does a language learner have to learn about the copula? There is a good deal of

crosslinguistic variation in the lexical realization of the copula: in languages like English there is a

single form of the copula (be)3 and it is overt, but in some languages the copula tends to be null in

present tense (e.g. Russian), while in other languages there are several different lexical items that

are copulas (e.g. Chinese, Malayalam). Given this type of variation, the learner must rely on

structural properties of copulas in identifying the lexical item (or items) that is a copula in the

learner's particular language. For example, a learner of English might notice that be is a raising

verb (it can have an expletive subject), it is semantically bleached, and it makes a nonverbal

category into a verbal predicate. If the learner has an innate expectation that language will contain

an item that has these structural properties, then noticing the behavior of be in these respects is

what is necessary for learning that be is a copula in English. This hypothesis leads to a number of

questions:

•if one of the defining properties of be is its being a raising verb (i.e. involving A-

movement of the subject), why are other raising verbs acquired later (seem, appear), and

2There are also syntactic differences: She seems to be cold, *She is to be cold.3Some people, like Den Dikken (1995) and Benveniste (1960?) would say that have is also a copula. I tend to agree

with this view, but I won't discuss the details here.

3

why is passive acquired so late? How do children recognize that something is a raising

verb? Maybe by the presence of expletive subjects (problem of weather verbs).

•how does a child learn that be is semantically bleached? Perhaps there are syntactic cues

available, e.g. the wide range of syntactic categories be can combine with.

•if be can be accounted for in a unified way (cf. Heggie's verbal operator), why is be not

acquired uniformly (data (Becker 1998) to be discussed in section 2)?

It may be argued that the abstractness of be makes it difficult to acquire. It is not a semantic

primitive, in the sense that to understand a sentence like John is tall, one first has to know the

meaning of 'John' and the meaning of 'tall', for which there are nonlinguistic clues. But there is no

nonlinguistic clue to the meaning of 'is'. On the other hand, the "verbalizer" function of be may in

fact make it simple to learn: if a child notices in the input that there is an item that consistently

creates a verbal predicate out of a nonverbal category, the child could hypothesize that this item

universally serves to make a predicate into the right "type" (syntactically speaking: category) to be

linked to (applied to) the subject.

One of the more mysterious properties of copular constructions is their sensitivity to

temporal boundedness. Sensitivity to temporal boundedness surfaces in different languages in

different ways. For example Spanish has two copulas that are translated into English as 'be': ser

and estar. Ser is associated with permanent properties (e.g. John is tall) and set membership (John

is a doctor), while estar is generally associated with temporary properties and locations. (This is

not exactly the right characterization of the split, as I will discuss below.) A real question is why

languages make use of a distinction between temporally bounded vs. unbounded properties;

nevertheless this distinction appears in a number of languages. In addition to Spanish ser/estar,

Hebrew draws a distinction between essential and nonessential properties, and even in English we

see syntactic differences between what are often called stage-level and individual-level predicates

(e.g. There is a man sick, but *There is a man tall). What exactly is the nature of the grammatical

distinction between temporally bounded and unbounded properties? It is hoped that the way

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children make these grammatical distinctions will help us better understand how these distinctions

work in adult grammar.

This prospectus is organized into two main sections. The first section gives a brief

overview of certain aspects of the behavior of copulas in adult grammar. First I provide a summary

of some of the main issues that have arisen historically in the literature on the role of the copula in

sentences, and then I discuss more recent analyses as developed within the generative tradition

(Stowell 1978, 1981, Heggie 1988, Moro 1993, Den Dikken 1995). I will focus on topics that will

become relevant for the child language data (e.g. whether different be constructions can be unified

under a single analysis, the ability of be to host a predicate in the structural subject position,

predicate raising in existentials). At the end of this section I will give a brief typological survey of

copular constructions in a few different languages. This survey will give us a sense of the variation

(and uniformity) that UG permits in the realization of the copula.

The second section turns to the acquisition data. Here I present what we know so far about

the distribution of the copula in children's speech (Sera 1992, Hoekstra & Hyams 1997, Becker

1998). The English data examined thus far indicate that be is mostly null in children's locative

expressions, while it is mostly overt in deictic and existential expressions. I will discuss a variety

of copular constructions, including locatives (a man is in the garden) and existentials (there is a

man in the garden), identificational expressions (that is a dog), progressives (John is leaving), and

nominal and adjectival predicatives (John is a student/tall), and I will discuss some possible

similarities between child English and child Spanish copular constructions. I will also look at the

question of whether instances of null be are equivalent to Root Infinitive main verbs, and whether

there is cross-linguistic variation in this respect.

1. The syntax of copular constructions in adult grammar

1.2 Traditional accounts of copular/predicative constructions

Throughout the history of analyses of copular constructions, there are a few recurring

themes. One is whether the copula is part of the predicate (verb phrase; i.e. whether the copula is a

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verb) or whether it is outside of it, neither subject nor predicate. Aristotle considered the copula to

be the expression of tense features, equivalent to verbal inflection but not a verb itself, thus

separate from the predicate. Abelard, an 11th century French philosopher and theologian also

believed that the copula was separate from the predicate; in fact we owe our term "copula" (from

Latin copulare 'to link') to his view that the verb be served as a liaison between the subject and

predicate.

Some other common themes include the ability of be to express identity4, the question of

which nominal is the "real" subject when you have two definite DPs (e.g. John is the teacher; The

teacher is John), whether be is lexically ambiguous in its uses as auxiliary (John is leaving) and as

a "main verb," i.e. as an expression of existence or intensionality (e.g. John is being obnoxious),

and how case is assigned to the postcopular NP (most accounts assume that be cannot assign case

or theta roles).

Here I focus on a few accounts of be as a raising verb (in particular relating to predicate

raising), and an account that unifies several different types of "be" under one analysis.

1.2.1 Stowell: be is a raising verb

Many current accounts of the copula make assumptions about the syntax of be that were

first argued by Stowell (1978, 1981) with regard to there-insertion, namely the assumption that be

is a raising verb that takes a small clause complement. Previous transformational accounts of there-

insertion held that sentences like those in (1) are derived from the corresponding sentences in (2)

by rightward movement of the indefinite DP and insertion of there:

(1) There is a man in the garden.

There are books on the table.

(2) A man is in the garden.

4For instance Russell (1919) argued that be can express identity but in this case be is actually a main verb, i.e. a

predicate; Quine (1943) similarly argues that be expresses identity. Higgins (1973), in contrast, argues that be does

not express identity in cases like The number of planets is nine, where [the number of planets] and [nine] are not

extensionally equivalent.

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Books are on the table.

Stowell's (1978) important contribution was to analyze be as a raising verb, like seem. Thus the

underlying form for both (1) and (2) type sentences is as in (3).

(3) [ e [ is [ a man [ in the garden]]]]

In the case of there-insertion, no rightward movement is necessary: there is simply inserted in

subject position (an empty pre-auxiliary NP position). In the non there-insertion case, the NP is

raised to fill the (underlyingly empty) subject position.

The raising analysis is able to capture a number of facts about existential constructions. For

example the fact that (4a-b) are grammatical while (5a-b) are not follows directly from the fact that

the regular predicative version of these sentences are grammatical and ungrammatical, respectively

(i.e. A man was sick, but *A man was tall). I give Stowell's examples here:

(4) a. There was a man sick.

b. There are three pigs loose.

(5) a. *There was a man tall.

b. *There are three pigs stupid. Stowell (1978, ex.11)

The reason for the difference between (4) and (5) was originally given by Carlson (1977).

Although cardinal and indefinite NPs normally denote kinds (e.g. A man is tall is okay on the

generic interpretation, where a man refers to the kind, 'men'), under existential quantification they

denote a stage. That is, when the existential operator ∃ binds the NP a man5, the NP denotes a

stage of being a man, i.e. a "slice" of a man's life. A stage can only have accidental or temporary

properties as attributes (hence the term "stage-level", e.g. sick), not permanent or "individual-

level" properties (e.g. tall). This is because it is nonsensical to imply that an inherent property

5Or: the existential operator binds the variable introduced by the NP a man, in Heimian terms.

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follows from a noninherent or temporary one (Carlson 1977: 324)6. Therefore in both existential

sentences (as in (4-5)) and in their regular predicative counterparts, predicates must denote stage-

level or non-inherent properties.

Additionally there is the restriction that copular sentences with NP predicates cannot

become existential there sentences:

(6) a. A friend of mine is a real jerk.

b. *There is a friend of mine a real jerk. Stowell (1978, ex. 14a-b)

Although Milsark attributes this NP restriction to the fact that NPs generally denote individual-level

properties, and the few stage-level (temporally bounded) NPs are simply blocked from both

regular copular sentences (like 6a) and existential sentences (like 6b), Stowell argues that there are

some stage-level NPs that can occur in copular sentences, as in (7a), but are still blocked from the

existential sentence (7b):

(7) a. Two students were real nuisances in class on Friday.

b. *There were two students real nuisances in class on Friday.

(adapted from Stowell 1978, ex.22)

According to Stowell, the ungrammaticality of (7b) follows from the subcategorization frame of

be, a transitive (now thought to be unaccusative) verb that takes an NP "object", possibly followed

by an AP, PP or gerundive verb, but not another NP. Note that there is analyzed as an NP; thus it

is clear that in (7a) there are only two NPs, but in (7b) there are three (thus a violation of the

projection principle).

6A simplified version of Carlson's example is:

(i) ??Alligators in the hallway are intelligent.

(ii) Alligators are intelligent.

Barring the reading of (i) in which there is a particular breed of hallway-dwelling alligators, the intelligence of

alligators in this sentence seems to depend on their being in the hallway, which does not make sense. (ii) is fine

because the inherent property of being intelligent can be thought to follow from the inherent property of being an

alligator. For discussion see Becker (1997a).

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Later, Stowell (1981) analyzed the postcopular phrase as a small clause, thus drawing the

analogy between expressions like I consider [John smart] and There is [a man sick]. The regular

copular sentences (A man is sick) are then formed by raising the subject NP of the small clause to

matrix subject position. The raising analysis of be is now taken to be standard.

1.2.2 Heggie: be as verbal operator

Heggie (1988) adopts one of the main arguments of Stowell (1978, 1981), namely that of

the copula as a raising verb that has a small clause complement, and argues for a unified analysis of

the copula in predicative, equative/identificational, cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions.7 Heggie's

analysis revolves around analyzing the copula as what she calls a "verbal operator": something

which has the effect of creating a predicate out of whatever category is in the "appropriate

position". "Appropriate position" is defined as the predicate position of the small clause

complement of the copula. For example in (8), the XP is the predicate, and it can be any category.

(8) ... bei [SC DP [ XPi ]]

The copula coindexes the predicate, which selects the subject of the small clause. At S-structure the

small clause subject raises to Spec,IP.

According to Heggie (among others, cf. Pollock 1989), the copula lacks both a theta-grid

and the ability to assign Case. Predicate NPs, she argues, do not need Case because they are not

arguments.8 She provides a number of examples in support of this position, among other things

7Heggie considers sentences like John is the teacher to be "pseudo-equative", as she insists that the postcopular NP

is a predicate and not an argument. She considers That man is Bill to be an equative (these are often called

"identificational"). Clefts are sentences like It is Mary who is my friend, and pseudoclefts, as I discuss below, are

sentences like What John ate was an apple.8She argues for the lack of Case on predicate NPs based on adjacency effects; namely material can intervene between

be and the postcopular NP, whereas it cannot intervene between a main verb and its object.

(i) a. John is evidently a genius.

b. *John bought evidently 3 loaves of bread.

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the behavior of French "predicate" clitics. That is, unlike argument clitics (Je lafem vois "I see

her"), clitics corresponding to predicates under a copula do not agree in number or gender:

(9) a. Marie sera ma meilleure amie.

Mary will be my best friend.

b. Marie le/*la sera

Mary will be it Heggie's ex. (102)

Thus Heggie argues that the postcopular DP is not an argument, but a predicate.

Transfering this analysis to English, she claims that postcopular definite DPs (e.g. John is the

teacher, what she calls "pseudo-equatives") are likewise predicates, not arguments.

As for the cases of inverted pseudo-equatives (i.e. The teacher is John), she argues that the

definite DP subject does not actually refer in these cases and is a raised predicate. That is, The

teacher is John comes from the same underlying structure as John is the teacher. In the inverted

case, the teacher raises to a focus position (Spec,CP) and the copula undergoes subject-aux

inversion.9

The case of equative constructions (That man is John) is the most difficult for Heggie to

explain. She claims that the name DP, John, behaves syntactically like a predicate (evidence from

clefting, see (11)), but it clearly introduces a discourse referent (evidence from himself-

modification, see (12)).

(11) a. That man over there is Jack Jones.

b. It's that man over there that is Jack Jones.

c. *It's Jack Jones that that man over there is. Heggie's (141)

(12) That old woman is Peter Sellers himself. Heggie's (148)

9A problem for this view is the fact that in embedded wh-questions, the definite DP in fact appears to be the true

subject. Witness the following:

(i) John is the teacher / The teacher is John.

(ii) *?I wonder who t is the teacher.

(iii) I wonder who the teacher is t.

Higgins (1973) notes that this sort of test shows that the definite DP the teacher is the underlying subject.

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In (11), the name Jack Jones cannot be clefted, as it should be if it is an argument.10 In (12)

himself clearly modifies the name Peter Sellers, and not the subject DP that old woman. Thus name

DPs in equatives appear to be "referring predicates." As a predicate, such a DP does not need

Case. As a referring DP, however, it does. Heggie discusses a number of solutions to the Case

problem, in the end suggesting that the name DP gets Case through forming a chain with the deictic

DP (e.g. that man over there).

She argues, I believe convincingly, against Williams' (1984) type of analysis of copular

constructions involving a "flat" structure. She shows that there are indeed many asymmetries

between the subject DP and predicate DP (even when both are definite), such that the structure

must involve strict binary branching, and the copula must select a small clause predicate. Although

she does not consider there-sentences, Heggie provides a unified treatment of several other types

of copular constructions.

I find Heggie's characterization of be as a "verbal operator" quite appealing, in particular

because the status of be as a verb or a non-verb remains unclear.11 In many ways it is verb-like: it

bears tense or agreement marking as main verbs do, it can occur in nonfinite forms such as being

and been, and when it is preceded by other auxiliary material it follows negation like main verbs:

John will not be late; John will not leave. On the other hand, be is different from other verbs: it

always inverts with the subject in interrogatives (Is John a doctor?), its morphology is more

irregular than any other verb (this is true crosslinguistically), and it does not assign case (according

to many accounts, though not all) or theta roles (it is semantically "bleached", as discussed in

section 0).

The unified analysis of be is also appealing from a learnability perspective. If be is a verbal

operator, i.e. a functional element that "verbalizes" any nonverbal category in its predicate, then

10Clefting is normally used as a test of constituency, not argumenthood, so I am not sure exactly what her tests

show. Also her tests involving only modification seem to give contradictory results (see pp. 99-100).11Heggie's idea is also similar to ideas expressed by Hoekstra (1992), who suggests that no verbs are really primitive

but instead are derived by the incorporation of a nominal lexical item into a functional head, a kind of verbalizer.

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perhaps what a child needs to notice is whether the ambient language has an overt lexical item that

takes nonverbal elements (e.g. a girl, tall) and turns them into verbal elements (be a girl, be tall).

Furthermore, if be raises predicates as well as arguments (assuming that existential there, among

other things, is a predicate - I will return to this idea below), this is also something that could be

noticed by learners. Predicate raising in be constructions is discussed in the literature on

pseudoclefts and on predicate inversion, to which I turn now.

1.2.3 Pseudoclefts

There is a sizable literature on pseudocleft constructions (sentences that host a free relative

in subject position, e.g. What John ate was an apple), and I will only cover a small fraction of it

here. Since Higgins (1973; based on Akmajian 1970), two types of pseudoclefts are recognized:

predicational and specificational pseudoclefts. The sentence in (13) is ambiguous between the two

readings, disambiguated in the (a) and (b) versions:

(13) What John is is important.

a. What John is is important to himself (=John is important to himself; specificational)

b. What John is is important to him (=e.g. John's job is important to him; predicational)

Williams (1983) argues that in specificational pseudoclefts, the free relative is actually an

underlying predicate, raised to subject position, while in predicational pseudoclefts the free relative

is a true subject.

(14) predicational: What Sis XP

specificational:XP is What S

subjectbe predicate

The XP in this case would be [important to him/himself]. So the underlying form of a

specificational pseudocleft would be, for example, Important to himself is what John is.

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Williams bases this analysis on a number of syntactic tests, such as subject-aux inversion

(*Is what John is important to himself? / ok: Is what John is important to him?) and raising (*What

John is seems to be important to himself. / ok: What John is seems to be important to him). He

shows that only specificational pseudoclefts show "connectedness" effects (Higgins 1973). That

is, the anaphor himself can corefer with the NP John even though the right c-command relation

does not appear to obtain, because the subject Important to himself is "connected" to its predicate

What John is.

Iatridou & Varlokosta (1995) discuss some crosslinguistic variation in the availability of

specificational pseudoclefts. A number of languages, including Modern Greek (MG), Italian and

Bulgarian, have predicational but not specificational pseudoclefts. They show that in MG, free

relatives can be used to form pseudoclefts, but these can never have a specificational reading (e.g.

What John is is silly cannot mean "John is silly" in MG). Furthermore, pseudoclefts in MG do not

show any connectedness effects, as the postcopular NP cannot have Accusative Case, although it

is the object of the main verb in the free relative. For example:

(15) Afto pu agapai o Kostas perisotero ston kosmo ine o skilakos tu / *ton skilako tu

this which loves Kostas more in the world is his doggie-Nom/*Acc

What Kostas loves most in the world is his doggie (I&V,'95p.3)

The lack of connectedness effects is expected given the lack of a specificational reading in MG

pseudoclefts. Specificational pseudoclefts are not available in MG because free relatives in MG

cannot function as predicates (i.e. not because the copula cannot necessarily host a predicate in its

subject position), as Iatridou & Varlokosta show independently.

The literature on specificational pseudoclefts suggests that be is a predicate raiser. If

Williams' analysis of specificational pseudoclefts is right (i.e. the free relative in subject position is

a predicate), then perhaps a child learning a language like English could use the fact that be occurs

in specificational pseudoclefts to (partly) determine that be is a copular verb.

1.2.4 Predicate inversion

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The possibility of a predicate occupying the structural subject position has also been

addressed with respect to predicate inversion in regular predicative copular sentences, by Andrea

Moro (1989, 1993, 1997) and some others. Moro's main point, which was adopted by several

later accounts (most notably Hoekstra & Mulder 1990 and Den Dikken 1995), was to argue that the

canonical subject position of a sentence (Spec,IP) can be occupied by either the underlying subject

or the underlying predicate of a predicative copular sentence. One nice effect of Moro's "flexible

clause structure" approach is that he is able to provide a uniform treatment of predicatives and

existentials, something few other accounts manage to do (an exception is Stowell 1978, 1981).

Moro's evidence for claiming that the canonical subject position can contain either a subject

or a predicate in copular sentences is based on extraction effects. He notes that there are

asymmetries in extraction possibilities between the following two sentences, although they appear

at first blush to be equivalent.

(16) a. [A picture of Ho Chi Minh] was [the cause of the riot].(canonical)

b. [The cause of the riot] was [a picture of Ho Chi Minh].(inverse)(17) a. [Which riot]i do you think [IP [a picture of Ho Chi Minh] was [the cause of ti]] ?

b.*[Which person]i do you think [IP [the cause of the riot]j was [SC [a picture of ti] tj]] ?c. *[Which picture]i do you think [IP [the cause of the riot]j was [SC ti tj]] ?

Extraction of or from the object position normally leads to grammaticality, as in (17a) (and this is

generally true for objects of main verbs). The fact that it is impossible in (17b-c) indicates,

according to Moro, that [a picture of t] is the underlying subject, while the underlying predicate,

[the cause of the riot] is in Spec,IP. Example (17b) violates Subjacency, since the trace ti has

moved out of a DP and an IP; (17c) violates the ECP, since the trace ti is not properly governed

(the assumption is that be does not theta-govern its complement).

Moro argues that existentials (there is a picture of Ho Chi Minh (on the wall)) are formed

by the same predicate inversion operation that yields inverse copular sentences as in (16b). His

evidence for this claim is the fact that extraction of the DP "object" in a there-sentence yields

ungrammaticality (cf. 17c).

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(18) *[Which picture]i do you think [IP [there]j was [SC ti tj]] ?

Note however that extraction from within the subject does not yield a Subjacency violation when

there is the raised predicate, in contrast to (17b) above.

(19) [Which person]i do you think [IP [there]j was [SC [a picture of ti] tj]] ?

Moro claims that raising there turns the copula into a lexical head, so that it can L-mark the SC

subject; this neutralizes the barrierhood of the subject DP. [I'm not sure why there can do this but

an ordinary predicate DP can't, but I haven't finished reading Moro's dissertation yet.]

Hoekstra & Mulder (1990) take a similar approach to existential constructions. They argue

that existentials involve locative preposing, on analogy to traditional locative preposing cases like

Into the room entered a man. The basis for their analogy is two-fold: the fact that they analyze

regular locative preposing cases in a very similar fashion to Moro's analysis of there-constructions,

namely as in (20),

(20) therei/PPi [be [SC NP ti]]

and the fact that both locative preposing sentences and there-sentences are subject to an ergativity

requirement: both constructions are only possible with either an ergative (unaccusative) verb (a

verb that takes only one internal argument and does not assign Accusative case to it), or with an

unergative verb that has been "ergativized" (e.g. as in Into the room walked a man / There walked a

man into the room) (see Hoekstra & Mulder 1990 for a discussion of ergativization–basically the

presence of a locative phrase will "ergativize" an unergative V). However unlike Moro, they

specifically claim that there is a locative predicate, thus a PP, not an NP. Although I think the

analogy between there-sentences and locative preposing is correct (or at least on the right track), I

am a bit confused about the case-related arguments. A number of Hoekstra & Mulder's

explanations for properties of there-constructions, including differences in the ergativity

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requirement between Dutch er and English there rest on differences in how Nominative case is

assigned to there/er. But if there/er is a predicate and not an argument, I am not sure why the case

assignment problems arise, unless I am misunderstanding the issues (possibly I am confusing case

with licensing).

Den Dikken (1995) adopts both Moro's claim that existentials involve predicate inversion

and Hoekstra & Mulder's claim that there is a locative phrase. He adds to the picture an analysis of

small clauses as AgrPs, and restrictions on movement following from the Minimal Link condition

(Chomsky 199312). Specifically, Den Dikken argues that when the predicate (i.e. there) raises to

subject position in an existential or locative-preposing sentence, the head of the SC (Agr0) must

raise into the head of the projection where the copula is generated (he calls it F), thus forming a

complex head F+Agr. His structure looks like this:

(21) FP

4

spec F '

LPj 4

Agri+FAgrP

4

spec Agr'

4

Agr LP Den Dikken's (1)

ti tj

LP is a predicate formed by any of the lexical categories (N, V, A, P). The raising of LP to

matrix subject position (Spec,FP) violates the Minimal Link Condition by bypassing Spec,AgrP as

the closest landing site. The lower head Agr thus has to raise to F in order to save the derivation.

Incorporation into be of the lower Agr head can have the effect of forcing an overt copula in cases

12According to the Minimal Link Condition, an XP can only move to the next position within its minimal domain,

i.e. it's own projection. Its minimal domain can be extended however by adjunction of the head of the XP's original

(underlying) projection to the next higher head.

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where the copula would otherwise be optionally overt. This effect can be seen in the following

example:

(22) a. John is the best candidate.

b. The best candidate is John.

(23) a. I consider John (to be) the best candidate.

b. I consider the best candidate *(to be) John.

In (23b) the predicate [the best candidate] has inverted with the subject, John, and the infinitive be

in the lower clause must be overt. Note however that this analysis is not immediately compatible

with the fact that the "inverted" definite DP does appear to be able to act as an underlying subject,

at least as measured by embedded wh-questions: I wonder who *(is) the best candidate (is) (this

was noted previously in footnote 9).

Den Dikken's specific version of the existentials-as-predicate inversion analysis will

become important when we look at the child data. If head incorporation into the copula drives

overtness in adult grammar (cf. 23b), does it also drive overtness in child grammar? That is, if

existentials are formed by predicate inversion, and predicate inversion requires head incorporation

into the copula, then we can make the prediction that children's copulas in existentials will be

largely overt. This does in fact seem to be the case, as I will discuss in section 2.2. Furthermore,

there are direct implications in Den Dikken's analysis for the overtness of have in child grammar

and its relation to be. Den Dikken not only argues that existential be contains an incorporated Agr

head (F+Agr), but that the verb have is formed by the existential copula be plus an incorporated P

head (hence F+Agr+P) (similar arguments for "complex" have are found in Kayne 1993, Freeze

1992 and Mahajan 1994, discussed in Becker 1997). If the extra functional material in existential

be makes it overt more than non-incorporated be, might not the additional functional material in

have make it overt even more than existential be? For child English this does seem to be true, since

have is virtually never omitted, existential be is omitted infrequently but more than have, and

certain types of predicative (unincorporated) be are omitted much more frequently than existential

be. A preliminary look at Italian child data suggests that auxiliary have in past participles is omitted

17

less often than auxiliary be in past participles, but this result needs to be investigated more

thoroughly. We can see, at least, that the predicate-inversion / head-incorporation approach to

certain types of copular constructions makes very interesting and apparently correct predictions

about patterns of be omission in child language.

1.3 Typological survey

In this subsection I briefly discuss the distribution of the copula in Russian, Spanish and

Hebrew. In Russian, the present tense copula is obligatorily null in certain (many) copular

constructions and optionally overt in others. In Spanish there are two distinct copulas, both of

which are always overt. Hebrew contains three different copulas, two of which can be null. The

purpose of this section is to have a frame of reference for the types of syntactic behavior UG

allows for copulas; it will be important to keep these facts in mind when evaluating the child data.

1.3.1 Russian

The copula in Russian is obligatorily overt only in the past and future tenses. In present

tense it shows up only under particular circumstances; otherwise it must be null. The environments

in which it is null are exemplified in (24) (from Kondrashova 199x).

(24) a. Kolja (*est') obmanut. (passives)

Kolja is deceived.

b. NaS utSitel' (*est') Kolja (identificational expressions)

Our teacher is Kolja.

c. Kolja (*est') durak / umnaja (predicatives)

Kolja is (a) fool / smart

d. Vorona (*est') ptica. (generic statements)

(A) crow is (a) bird.

e. MaSina (*est') pered domom. (locatives)

(The) car is in front of (the) house.

f. U MaSi (*est') sinie glaza (inalienable possession)

PP Masha-Gen is blue eyes-Nom

"Masha has blue eyes."

18

The copula can be overt in existentials and alienable possession expressions, as in (25).

(25) a. V dome (est') telefon.

In house is phone-sg.Nom

"There's a phone in the house."

b. U Koli (est') maSina.

PP Kolja-Gen is car-Nom

"Kolja has a car."

The copula can be overt in the structures in (25), however its appearance is restricted.

Kondrashova proposes that be is only overt (in her terms: inserted in V) when it is needed either to

express tense features (i.e. in past or future tense; present tense features in Russian are "weak" and

don't need to be expressed) or to support Existential Closure. That is, for Kondrashova,

Existential Closure is dependent upon having lexical material in V, which she places directly under

∃P, the locus of the existential operator, ∃op. She points out that in each of the constructions in

(24), existential quantification does not take place because the subject is either referential (so it does

not introduce a free variable) or generic (in which case the variable is bound by the Generic

operator). Assuming that there cannot be vacuous quantification, existential closure will not come

into play where there is no free variable to be bound; if there is no need for existential

quantification, then ∃P will not be projected (under some notion of Economy) and be will not be

inserted in V.

Kondrashova shows that the presence of be in existentials and alienable possessives (as in

(25)) depends on the subject NP (the Nominative NPs in (25)) having an indefinite interpretation.

Like in English, the NP in existentials and possessives has to be indefinite.13 Inalienable

possession also involves an indefinite NP (e.g. John has blue eyes), yet in Russian it cannot take

overt be. The incompatibility of inalienable possessives with overt be still follows from the

13There is a sharp definiteness effect for existentials in English (There is a/*the phone in the house). Definite NPs in

alienable possessives yield a very particular reading, that of temporary possession (John has the car). Den Dikken

(1997) discusses the structural differences between temporary and permanent possession constructions.

19

existential restriction: in saying that John has blue eyes, this statement in no way means that "There

are blue eyes such that John has them", rather the NP blue eyes (or having blue eyes) is a property

of John, so inalienable possession may be seen as property predication (note that in cases of body

parts, it is inherent property predication).

Kondrashova further argues that the existential interpretation of an indefinite NP follows

from the Proper Subset Principle. That is, in order for an NP to get an existential reading, the

individual(s) denoted by the NP must be a proper subset of a group (specifically, a proper subset

of the intersection of the set denoted by the possessor, the possessee and the restrictive adjective

that modifies the possessee). This is shown by the fact that if an NP in an inalienable possessive

denotes a unique individual, be cannot be overt:

(26) a. *U Koli est' vysokij otec.

"Kolja has a tall father"

b. U Koli est' vysokij brat.

"Kolja has a tall brother."14

The NP in (26b), brat 'brother', can be a proper subset of the set of brothers, whereas our

knowledge of the world tells us that each person can only have a single father.

To summarize, the present tense copula can only be overt when the subject NP can receive

an existential interpretation; this in turn is only possible when the NP is indefinite and denotes an

individual that is a proper subset of a restricted set.

1.3.2 Spanish

Spanish has two copulas that translate as be in English. The difference between the two,

ser and estar, has often been characterized in terms of individual-level and stage-level predication,

respectively. However the difference is actually somewhat different. Ser is used in all nominal

14The facts are actually slightly more complex than I make them out to be here: the adjective vysokij 'tall' is crucial:

it serves to restrict the set denoted by the NP brat 'brother'. Because of space and time limitations I will not go into

these details here; see Kondrashova (199x: 184-185) for a fuller explanation.

20

predicative constructions (e.g. John is a student), even when the subject is not permanently or

inherently characterized by the set denoted by the predicate nominal. For example in the sentence in

(27), the verb ser is used even though there is a clear temporal restriction.

(27) Elisa fue reina por un día.

Elizabeth ser+past queen for a day

"Elizabeth was queen for a day." Sera (1992)

Sera (1992) argues that nominal predication expresses class or set membership, and that the

strength of the set membership relation overrides any temporariness in the set membership.

With adjectival predicatives, the use of ser vs. estar adheres to an inherent vs. accidental

property distinction. Ser is used with inherent properties (roughly, individual-level), while estar

(from Latin stare 'to stand') is used with accidental properties (roughly, stage-level). However in

locative expressions there is an interesting difference in the uses of ser and estar. Ser is used to

express the location of an event; estar is used to express the location of an object or individual

(even when that object's location is permanent, e.g. Cuba está en el caribe 'Cuba is in the

Caribbean'). The most plausible connection between the expression of permanent/inherent

properties and the locations of events (both involve ser) seems to me to be the fact that the location

of an event is an essential property of that event. If the event took place in another location, it

would then be a different event. But objects and individuals are continuous in their existence across

locations. Thus a location does not constitute a defining property of an object or an individual, but

it is essential to an event.

The distinction between essential and nonessential characteristics may turn out to be

fundamental in characterizing certain properties of be. For instance, as we will see in section 2, it

appears to be the case that young children distinguish copular constructions along these lines.

1.3.3 Hebrew

Hebrew is an interesting language to look at in terms of copular constructions both because

the copula is often nonovert, and because the lexical items that are labelled "copulas" are so labelled

21

controversially. That is, they function both as pronouns and as copulas, and some researchers

(e.g. Rapoport 1987) consider them non-verbal. In her dissertation, Heggie (1988) discusses one

of the Hebrew copulas, H (hu). She argues that it is a clitic in Infl. Ordering facts with respect to

adverbs and negation suggest that H is in Infl; the fact that it cannot be stressed or stranded

suggests that it is a clitic15. She points out that H is largely null in present tense predicative

sentences (it is overt in past tense), but there are further restrictions on its overtness. Specifically, it

cannot be overt in a predicative sentence if the subject is a personal pronoun (he (*is) a student). It

is optionally overt in equatives where the subject is a pronoun (he (is) John). And it is obligatory in

inverse equative sentences (John *(is) that man). While Rapoport (1987) argues that these facts

support a nonverbal analysis of H, Heggie explains them in the following way: she analyzes H as a

lexicalized form of the copula which must be overt when it needs to lexically head-govern an empty

category. For example, a trace of movement of an NP that originated in the predicate under the

copula must be lexically head-governed (otherwise there is an ECP violation–notice that this is very

similar in spirit to Moro's proposal). Therefore in cases where the postcopular predicate has raised,

H must be overt. (More must be said about why H is optionally overt in equatives with a subject

pronoun, which I believe Heggie does.)

Heggie's proposal that the overt copula in Hebrew is needed to lexically head-govern an

empty category might also capture the Russian facts. Although Heggie's account does not say

anything about restrictions on indefiniteness or existential interpretations, one might plausibly

argue that existentials and alienable possessives in Russian involve predicate raising. Recall from

the discussion of predicate inversion that existentials are argued to involve a raised predicate

(according to Hoekstra & Mulder (1990) and Den Dikken (1995) it is a locative predicate - thus

akin to the Russian PP). Den Dikken further argues that possessives, like existentials, involve

predicate raising (the possessor is raised from a postcopular position). In fact Freeze (1992) shows

with crosslinguistic data that in many languages existentials and possessives are syntactically

equivalent; furthermore see the Appendix for evidence that some languages, e.g. Chinese, use the

15It can be stressed as a pronoun, but not as a copula (Curtiss, p.c.).

22

same copula in existentials and possessives, but don't use that copula in other constructions.

Therefore it is plausible to argue that the possessor in Russian is a raised predicate, so the copula

must be overt to lexically head-govern the trace of the possessor.

Heller (1999) discusses two different (pronominal) copulas in Hebrew: H (hu) and Z (ze).

She examines their differences with respect to different interpretations they yield in pseudoclefts.

Recall from section 1.2.3 what the predicational vs. specificational readings are (the example is

repeated here):

(13) What John is is important.

a. What John is is important to himself (=John is important to himself; specificational)

b. What John is is important to him (=e.g. John's job is important to him; predicational)

What Heller shows is that these two readings are disambiguated in Hebrew with the use of

H (hu) vs. Z (ze). She shows that an H copula yields only a predicational reading in pseudoclefts,

while the Z copula yields only a specificational reading. She also argues that there are two different

Z copulas, an agreeing one and a non-agreeing one, where the nonagreeing Z copula shows

connectivity effects while the agreeing Z copula does not. Recall what we said in section 1.2.3

about these two different readings of pseudoclefts, namely that (according to Williams 1983 and

others) the specificational reading involves a free relative predicate in subject position, while the

predicational pseudocleft involves an underlying subject in subject position. If Heller's empirical

generalization is right, the conclusion we are led to is that the Z copula, but not H, allows

predicates in its subject position.

Let me add a word of caution here. Heller's grammaticality judgments are not shared by

other native Hebrew speakers. In fact, there seems to be a good deal of variation in the syntactic

and semantic judgments of these sentences. However, there does seem to be agreement that both

predicational and specificational readings are available in Hebrew, and that there are differences

between H and Z in this respect.

Since both H and Z copulas can be null in the adult grammar, it will not be interesting if

Hebrew children omit them frequently. However there are certain restrictions on the overtness of

23

these copulas that are interesting. For instance, it appears to be the case that an overt H copula can

only be used with predicates that denote defining or essential properties (e.g. a table being a piece

of furniture, a mountain being tall/big, or trees being green), where these are not necessarily

individual-level predicates (e.g. John *H tall). Since English-speaking children tend to use an overt

copula with permanent properties but a null copula with accidental properties, it would be

interesting to see when Hebrew-speaking children begin producing overt H and Z copulas (e.g.

whether H comes in earlier than Z), and whether they make any errors in the distribution of these

elements.

Finally, Hebrew contains another copula, yesh, which appears in both existential

constructions and possessives (Borer, p.c.). Since yesh occurs with a dative pronoun (as

possessor) and a nominal possessee, we will be able to see whether Hebrew-speaking children

produce null-copular possessive constructions (i.e. to-me 0yesh NP). A few such utterances are

found in the Hebrew data from CHILDES, but I don't know yet how robust their occurrence is.

1.4 Summary of section 1

In the preceeding subsections I have discussed various accounts of the syntax of copular

constructions. All of the accounts I have discussed either argue for or assume the fact that be is a

raising verb. More particularly, it is capable not only of raising the subject of its small clause

complement to subject position, but also of raising the predicate of its SC complement. That is,

unlike other verbs, be can host a predicate in its subject position. This ability is evidenced in

specificational pseudoclefts, which host a free relative predicate in subject position, and in Moro's,

Hoekstra & Mulder's and Den Dikken's analyses of existentials as predicate inversion structures.

The crosslinguistic data suggest that predicate inversion in copular sentences, as well as

inherent property-denoting predication both play a role in determining the form of be (i.e. its

overtness, as in Russian and Hebrew, or its lexical form, as in Spanish). Some of the issues I will

turn to in the next section are: what are the effects of predicate inversion structures on the form that

be takes in child language? For instance, if existentials and possessives involve predicate raising, is

24

the child's copula in these constructions different from (e.g. overt more than) the copula in

structures that don't involve predicate raising?

Secondly what is the connection between the predication of essential or inherent properties

vs. accidental properties and the form that the copula takes? Perhaps the predication of an essential

property is somehow more fundamental to the function of be. For example, in the sentence A

mountain is rocky, we can think of a mountain as a set of properties, among which we necessarily

find "rocky" (i.e. if an object called "mountain" were a smooth, flat thing, it wouldn't be a

mountain), so a mountain is necessarily rocky. One question that we might ask is whether this

property of inherent predicates makes be conceptually easier to acquire in cases of inherent

property predication, and/or what is the grammatical reflex of the connection between a (particular)

form of be and inherent property predication.

Finally, I would like to know whether there is any connection between these two properties

of be: the ability to raise predicates and different types of predication. We already saw in section

1.2.1 that only stage-level properties can be predicated in existential sentences in English (which, if

we follow Moro, are instances of predicate raising). In fact, if we look at the complete paradigm of

there- vs. non-there copular constructions, some interesting patterns emerge.

(28)

there-construction regular predicative

There is a man sick. A man is sick.*There is a man tall. *A man is tall. (on the existential reading)There is a book on the table. A book is on the table.There is a party in the garden. *A party is in the garden.There are a million people in Topeka. ??A million people are in Topeka.

(temporary)16

*There is a Swiss man a contestant on the show A Swiss man is a contestant on the show.17

16Note that the disambiguated form for the permanent reading is Topeka has a million people. In this case, have

alternates with be.17Adapted from Stowell (1978).

25

There are clear effects of permanent/temporary predication, and perhaps temporal

boundedness more generally in the grammaticality of these constructions. The first two pairs of

sentences show that temporary/accidental properties can be predicated of indefinites in both

existential and non-existential predicatives, while permanent/inherent properties cannot be

predicated in either (this was discussed above in section 1.2.1). The second two pairs show that

indefinite nominals that denote objects or individuals can occur in both existential and non-

existential predicative constructions, while indefinite event nominals (a party) cannot be the subject

of a locative predicate (events may be seen as less permanent than objects). In the fifth pair we see

that the existential sentence is ambiguous between a temporary and a permanent reading (i.e. the

people happen to be there, e.g. for a conference (temporary), or they live there (permanent)), while

raising the indefinite to subject position forces the temporary reading. Finally, the last pair shows

that while an indefinite NP subject can have a nominal predicate, two nominals cannot occur in

postcopular position in an existential sentence (so it is the complement of the 'party' case). These

facts are poorly understood at present. My hope is that a better understanding of the grammatical

restrictions placed on copular constructions by temporal boundedness will be suggested by the

acquisition data.

2. The copula in language development

Having explored some of the properties of the copula in adult grammar and some of the

variation we find among languages in copular constructions, let us now take a look at what we

know about the behavior of be in children's grammars. At the moment relatively little is known

about the acquisition of be. In addition to my own (preliminary) investigation there is one study of

Spanish-speaking children's copular sentences (Sera 1992), discussed below, and one study I

know of on the copula in early African American English (Wyatt 1995). Here I will mainly report

on my own findings based on a (brief) investigation of some English-speaking children. What I am

interested in is the contexts in which be is overt vs. the contexts in which it is null. Some of the

issues I will address are omission patterns of be in existenial, locative, predicative and progressive

26

sentences, and the question of whether a null copula is equivalent to a main verb Root Infinitive (in

both cases overt tense features are missing).

2.1 Locatives and existentials

Omission patterns of be in existential (there is a man in the room) and locative (a man is in

the room) constructions appear to strongly support Den Dikken's (1995) account (following

Hoekstra & Mulder 1990 and Moro 1989/93) of existentials as a form of predicate inversion.

Recall from section 1.1.4 that according to this account of existentials, predicate raising forces the

head of the post-copular SC to raise into the head occupied by be (to avoid a minimality violation;

Chomsky 1993). So the underlying structure of an existential sentence is as in (1).

(1) a. [FP Spec [F' F [AgrP XP [Agr' Agr [PP there]]]]]

b. [FP e [F' be [AgrP a man in the room [Agr' Agr [PP there]]]]]18

According to Den Dikken, the PP predicate there raises to Spec,FP, the XP in Spec,AgrP being

filled by the subject of the small clause. As I discussed in that section, the raising of the small

clause predicate to subject position has effects on the overtness of be in the adult grammar. I repeat

the relevant examples here:

(22) a. John is the best candidate.

b. The best candidate is John.

(23) a. I consider John (to be) the best candidate.

b. I consider the best candidate *(to be) John.

If head incorporation drives overtness of the copula in adult grammar, we might ask whether the

same is true in the child grammar. That is, if existential be is the [Agr+F] complex argued for by

Den Dikken, perhaps it will be overt more frequently than a simple F head. Although Den Dikken

18I am unsure why Den Dikken places the PP [in the room], clearly an adjunct, inside the spec of the small clause.

Moro places outside of the SC, hence: ...[a man [there]] [in the room].

27

does not discuss locative constructions, I think it is safe to assume that he would derive them as

regular copular constructions, i.e. raising the subject of the postcopular small clause. Thus the

derivations of existentials and locatives would be as follows:

(2) existential: [FP therei [F' F+Agrk [AgrP a man in the room [Agr' tk [PP ti]]]]]

(3) locative: [FP a mani [F' F [AgrP ti [Agr' Agr [PP in the room]]]]]

Let us now look at the child data. The subjects of this study are three children: Nina (Suppes

1973), Peter (Bloom 1970) and Naomi (Sachs 1983) (data from the CHILDES database,

MacWhinney & Snow 1985). Below in Table 1 I list the files that were used for each child, and the

age of the child at each data point. These files were selected because they were the earliest files

containing multiple occurrences of have utterances19. At these data points the children's grammars

are very much in a developing stage. That is, they produce utterances with root infinitives

(nonfinite bare verb forms) and null subjects alongside utterances with finite verbs and overt

subjects.

Table 1: CHILDES files examined for each child: file# (age of child)

Nina Peter Naomi

07 (2;0.24) 06 (2;0.10) 42 (2;0.28)

10 (2;1.15) 09 (2;2.13) 47 (2;1.17)

13 (2;2.6) 10 (2;3.3) 51 (2;2.25)

16 (2;3.5) 56 (2;3.29)

60 (2;4.30)

62 (2;5.8)

For each file, I coded any child utterance that either contained or seemed to lack the verb be in an

existential (there)20 or locative construction. In Table 2 I give the average rate of overt be in

19The relevance of have will be discussed in the dissertation.20There expressions include both deictic there expressions (There is my toy) and existentials (There are monkeys in

the zoo). Since the two constructions exhibit syntactic differences (definiteness effect, subject-aux inversion), the

28

existentials as compared to locatives (averaged across all files for each child). As we can see, be is

overt far more frequently in existentials than in locatives.

Table 2: Rate of overt vs. null be in existentials vs. locatives, averages per child

be: overt vs. null existentials locatives

Nina overt 37 16

null 8 38

% overt be 82% 29.6%

χ2 = 25.22, p ≤ .001

Peter overt 33 10

null 15 19

% overt be 68.7% 34%

χ2 = 7.28, p ≤ .007

Naomi overt 29 2

null 3 6

% overt be 90.6% 25%

χ2 = 12.27, p ≤ .001

Although Peter's data appear to be somewhat weaker than those of the other children, the results

for all children are highly significant.

To sum up this subsection, the omission patterns of be in existential and locative

constructions seem to support the analysis of existentials as involving predicate raising, insofar as

predicate raising forces head incorporation into the head of the FP/IP projection, and insofar as

head incorporation can drive overtness of the copula.

Another very interesting point to be made with respect to Den Dikken's analysis and the

child data involves possessive constructions. Den Dikken argues that possessives, like existentials,

question is whether they should be grouped together. For the present I will keep them together, on the assumption

that deictic there is pretty clearly a raised predicate (Den Dikken, p.c.).

29

involve predicate raising.21 According to his analysis, possessives are derived from the underlying

structure in (4) yielding the structure in (5).

(4) [FP Spec [F' F [AgrP DP [Agr' Agr [PP Pdat DP]]]]]

(5) [FP DPi[F' F+[Agrk+Pj] [AgrP DP [Agr' tk [PP tj ti]]]]]

As we can see from the derived structure in (5), the position of the copula now contains

two incorporated heads: it is [F+[Agr+P]]. The presence of the incorporated P is argued to cause it

to be pronounced 'have' (Kayne 1993 and others); furthermore, if the presence of additional

functional material in the copula drives overtness, and if the possessive copula contains an extra

head as compared to the existential copula, then we would expect the possessive copula (have) to

be overt even more than existential be.

In fact this is the case for English. Looking at the same files as in Table 1 (the same ones

we examined for the omission of be), we find that have is virtually never omitted:

Table 3: Occurrences of utterances containing/lacking have: n (%) (across all files)

Nina Peter Naomi

overt have (%) 108 (96%) 52 (98%) 34 (97%)

null have (%) 4 (4%) 1 (2%) 1 (3%)

Peter and Naomi had only one case each of a null have utterance, and three of Nina's four

examples were dubious cases of null have. The clear cases of omitted have are given below in (6-

8).

21The claim that possessives are a type of existential, or at least that the two constructions share a common

underlying structure, has been made by a number of people, perhaps most notably Freeze (1992), who shows that a

number of languages form possessives in precisely the same way as existentials. Also, many languages use a single

copula for both existentials and possessives (e.g. Classical Chinese and Hebrew; Spanish hay 'there is' and French il

y a 'there is' both use a form of 'have' for the existential copula). The related claim that have is derived from be has

also been made by a number of people (Kayne 1993, Mahajan 1994, i.a.). Den Dikken (1995, 1997) also argues in

favor of this view.

30

(6) Nina: that teddy bears on it (= that has teddy bears on it)

(7) Peter: lizards # Mama lizard a tongue. (= Mama lizard has a tongue)

(8) Naomi: we-'re breakfast now. (= we're having breakfast now)

Nina's three unclear cases are given in (9-11). I coded them as possible cases of null have because

of contextual evidence in the conversation.

(9) Nina: her big mouth (= she has a big mouth)

(10) Nina: I some more blocks (= I have some more blocks)

(11) Nina: her apple juice (= she has apple juice)

The evidence from have omission appears to lend additional support to Den Dikken's

analysis of existentials and possessives, again on the assumption that these structures involve head

incorporation, and on the assumption that head incorporation can drive overtness. We will now

look at some cases that indicate that head incorporation is not likely to be the whole story.

2.2 Predicatives

A look at predicative constructions (John is a student) reveals an apparent paradox. If be in

locatives may be null because it lacks extra functional material, in contrast to existential be, then be

in predicatives should likewise be omitted, since presumably predicatives do not involve predicate

inversion (i.e. Johni is [ti [a student]]). However the child data show that predicative be is overt far

more frequently than locative be, in fact about as often as existential be.22 In table 4 I give the

average rate of overt be in predicatives (listing identificational expressions (That is a

dog)separately).

Table 4

child be: overt vs. null predicatives identification (that) existentials locatives

Nina overt 32 91 38 16

22Peter's data is strange, and I have nothing to say about it at this point.

31

null 16 21 10 45

% overt be 66% 81% 79% 26%

Peter overt 97 141 33 10

null 8 30 15 19

% overt be 92% 82% 68.7% 34%

Naomi overt 18 24 29 2

null 14 4 3 6

% overt be 56% 82.7% 90.6% 25%

average 71.3% 81.9% 79.4% 28.3%

What we see in Table 4 is that be is overt in identificationals just as often, on average, as be

in existentials (both about 80%). And although there is considerable variation among the three

children in their rate of overt be in regular predicatives, the rate is nowhere near the low rate of

overt be in locatives (71% vs. 28%). (Even for Naomi, who has the lowest rate of overt be in

predicatives, she has 56% overt be in predicatives vs. only 25% in locatives.)

Since neither predicatives nor identificational expressions involve predicate raising, head

incorporation is not the reason for the high rate of overt be in these constructions. However a

closer look at the data reveals a different distinction. In predicate nominals be is almost always

overt (94%), while adjectival predicatives, which are used with either stage-level (e.g. sick) or

individual-level (e.g. big) predicates are more evenly split with respect to finiteness (and among

them, individual-level predicates tend to be overt more than stage-level ones [exact figures to be

filled in]).

English children's use of be in predicative constructions ties in nicely with what children

acquiring Spanish do. Recall from section 1.3.2 that in adult Spanish ser is used with predicate

nominals, predicate adjectives that express a permanent property and locatives that express the

location of an event; estar is used with predicate adjectives that express a temporary property and

locatives that express the location of an object/individual. In a study on children's use of the copula

in nominal, adjectival and locative predicative sentences, Sera (1992) found that children correctly

used ser in cases of nominal predication and permanent-property predication, and they correctly

32

used estar with temporary-property predication. However, the children only used estar in locatives,

regardless of whether the locative expressed the location of an object or an event. What is

interesting about her finding is that it seems that English-speaking children use an overt copula in

exactly the constructions in which Spanish-speaking children use ser, and that they use a null

copula exactly where Spanish-speaking children use estar.

Table 5: production of copulas in child Spanish and English

type of predication child Spanish (Sera 1992) child English (Becker 1998)

nominal predicate ser overt be

permanent-prop. adj. pred. ser overt be

temporary-prop. adj. pred. estar null be

locative estar null be

2.3 Be and have as aspect markers

In English, be is used to mark progressive aspect (John is singing), while have is used to

mark perfective aspect (John has left). In both German and Italian (as well as in a number of other

languages) either be or have can be used in perfectives, where the choice of be vs. have (known as

auxiliary selection) usually depends on whether the main verb is unaccusative (if unaccusative,

then the auxiliary is be).

There is a good deal of variation among English-speaking children (the 3 I have studied) in

their omission patterns of be in progressives, even more variation than we found in predicatives.

Their average rate (across files) of overt be in progressives is given in table 6.

Table 6: % overt be in progressives (avg.)

child be: overt vs. null progressives

Nina overt 30

null 79

% overt be 27%

Peter overt 50

null 7

33

% overt be 87%

Naomi overt 44

null 20

% overt be 68%

It is interesting that we find this degree of variation, given the high degree of uniformity of the rate

of overt be in other constructions, such as identificationals, existentials and locatives. Looking at

each individual data point, we see that each child is gradually requiring be to be overt more and

more frequently in progressives. At the moment I do not have an explanation for the high degree of

variation.

2.4 Null be as a Root Infinitive

A robust phenomenon found in many child languages is the appearance of children's matrix

verbs in either bare or infinitive form. This stage of linguistic development is known as the Root

Infinitive (or Optional Infinitive, Wexler 1994) stage. Some representative Root Infinitive (RI)

utterances are given below.

(12) a. Want more apple. (Bloom, Lightbown & Hood 1975)

b. Papa schoenen wassen.

Daddy shoes wash-inf. (Dutch, Weverink 1989)

c. Michel dormir.

Michel sleep-inf. (French, Pierce 1992)

d. Nicht will duschen.

not want shower-inf. (German, Becker 1995)

Since RIs fail to exhibit finiteness features, and a null copula also lacks overt finiteness features, a

logical question to ask is whether children's null copulas are syntactically equivalent to children's

main verb RIs. This question is relevant because if it turns out that children's use of an overt

copula with inherent property predication but a null copula with accidental or temporary property

predication is robust, we might explain this pattern, in part, by saying that inherent property

34

predication, having no temporal reference, requires grammatical tense marking (through an overt

copula). Accidental or temporary property predication, on the other hand, does have temporal

reference (in Kratzer's (199x) terms, it has an event argument), so it might be that its temporal

reference can receive a deictic interpretation, thus not requiring grammatical tense marking. The

deictic marking of tense in cases of accidental/temporary property predication might be similar to

children's deictic option for pronoun use (i.e. children often use pronouns without having

introduced the referent of the pronoun into the discourse).

One of the most important developments in child language research in recent years is the

insight that not all RI phenomena are the same. In particular, in languages that have true infinitive

morphology (e.g. Dutch, German, French), children's RIs behave differently than those in

languages without infinitive morphology (e.g. English). One difference is the tolerance of fully

specified subjects with nonfinite main verbs (English allows RIs with full DP subjects, i.e.

subjects with an overt determiner, while Dutch and German do not) (Hoekstra & Hyams 1997).

Another difference is the fact that in languages with infinitive morphology, children's RIs often

have a modal interpretation (Wijnen 1996, Hoekstra & Hyams 1998). I will return to the issue of

modal reference below.

Hoekstra & Hyams (1997) show that null be utterances and (main verb) RI utterances in

child English pattern together in terms of occurrence with underspecified DP subjects. That is, both

finite main verbs and finite be must occur with a fully specified subject: either a pronoun or a DP

with an overt determiner. Both nonfinite (bare) main verbs and null be can occur with either an

unspecified subject (a null pronoun or a bare, or determinerless, N) or a fully specified subject.23

23The ability of English RIs and null be to occur with fully specified subjects is explained in Hoekstra & Hyams

(1997), and it has to do with markedness effects. Briefly, the spec-head agreement requirement, on which H&H base

their analysis, only applies to "marked" forms. In English the bare verb is the unmarked form, hence there is no

spec-head agreement requirement, and the bare verb (or null be) can freely occur with either specified or unspecified

subjects (while finite verbs, being marked, must agree with their subjects in finiteness, i.e. an overt determiner or

pronoun). In Dutch, in contrast, it is the third person singular (3sg) form of the verb that is unmarked, so it can

occur with either specified or unspecified subjects, which it does, while nonfinite verbs are marked, thus occurring

only with determinerless or null subjects. A full justification of their proposal is given in H&H '97 and I will not

give it here.

35

Broadly, the idea is that since RIs result from an underspecification of finiteness (or tense) features

in the Infl projection, and since the copula (or auxiliary be) resides in Infl, then a null copula (or

auxiliary) is likewise a case of underspecified Infl features. On the basis of this theoretical

assumption and the similar behavior of null be and RIs with respect to subject properties, H&H

argue that null be is nonfinite, like main verb RIs.

In Table 7 I give the pattern of occurrence of finite/nonfinite main verbs and be with respect

to subject overtness in English. Table 8 gives the breakdown of main verbs vs. be.

Table 7: Finiteness and subject specification

Nonfinite V / null be Finite V / overt be

Null determiner (bare N) subj 91 5

Overt determiner/pronoun subj 295 417

Table 8: Finiteness and subject specification: main Vs vs. be

Nonfin. main V null be fin. main V overt be

Null determiner (bare N) subj 26 45 2 3

Overt determiner/pronoun subj 45 250 81 336

Table 8 shows that although we find many more occurrences of an overt determiner or

pronoun subject with null or overt be than we find with main verbs, the ratio of main verbs to be in

both finite and nonfinite conditions is the same (that is, 45:250 is about the same proportion as

81:336, both about 1:5), indicating that the difference in actual numbers reflects the greater overall

number of occurrences of be. Most importantly, the number of finite main verbs and overt be with

a bare N (null determiner) subject is equally low (2 and 3, respectively).

Hoekstra & Hyams (1997) address the issue of whether null be is finite or nonfinite in

response to the claim by Guasti & Rizzi (1996) that a null auxiliary be in children's wh-questions

(e.g. What doing?) constitutes a finite C resulting from I-to-C movement. Instead, H&H show that

English cases of null be are nonfinite: English children's wh-questions often involve a null subject

altogether, and over 50% of their wh-questions with an overt subject involve a bare N, thus a null

36

determiner (based on data from Adam (Brown 1973)). In short, the behavior of be with respect to

subject properties in declaratives mirrors the behavior of main verb RIs in this respect, confirming

the hypothesis that null be is equivalent to a main verb RI, and hence is nonfinite.24

One important caveat I must state here is that it is not known whether null be expressions in

child Dutch pattern like English null be or like Dutch main verb RIs with respect to occurrence with

full DP vs. bare N subjects. If Dutch null be is like English null be, then Dutch null be declaratives

should occur with both specified and unspecified subjects. If it is like Dutch main verb RIs,

however, it should only occur with unspecified subjects. As far as I know, this question remains

open at present (this is something to look into, also for German).25

Let us turn now to the second issue I mentioned above, namely the fact that RIs in "true

infinitive" languages (e.g. Dutch and German) often have a modal interpretation, while RIs in

"bare verb" languages (e.g. English) largely have a here-and-now interpretation. The availability of

modal reference in Dutch/German RIs is linked to an interesting asymmetry between eventive and

stative verbs in languages like Dutch and German, which I will discuss in the dissertation. Here I

will just give some facts about the modal interpretation of infinitives and how null be patterns in

this respect. For Dutch and German, we will see that null be does not have the same modal

reference as main verb RIs. As I show in tables 3 and 4, Dutch children's infinitives largely have a

modal interpretation, while English children's RIs (bare verb utterances) often have a nonmodal

reading (i.e. ongoing action).

Table 9: modal reference in Dutch RIs (adapted from Wijnen 1996)

past present future/modal total

RIs 3% (64) 10% (194) 86% (1625) 1883

finite 3% (21) 93% (657) 3% (21) 699

Table 10: modal reference in English RIs (adapted from Ud Deen 1997) 24The implication of their result is that English allows movement of a nonfinite element (null be) from I to C.25If Dutch null be patterns like English null be in both declaratives and wh-questions, however, this result would be

problematic for H&H's conclusion that English allows nonfinite I-to-C movement while V2 languages like Dutch

do not.

37

past present future/modal total

RIs 22% (59) 65% (171) 13% (34) 264

finite 37% (33) 52% (46) 26% (10) 89

German RIs show the same effect as in Dutch; modal reference in German RIs ranges from 57% to

100% (Becker 1999).

H&H (1998) show that the ability of Dutch RIs to express a modal interpretation is directly

related to their status as true infinitives, i.e. they show distinct infinitival morphology (-en), and

thus carry a [-realized] feature (according to Giorgi & Pianesi 1996), meaning that they are

compatible with a modal (i.e. irrealis) meaning. In contrast, English RIs are simply bare verbs,

bearing no actual infinitival morphology; such infinitives carry a [+perfective] feature (Giorgi &

Pianesi 1996), meaning that they are incompatible with a modal (irrealis) meaning.

I should point out that child Dutch/German speakers do not produce stative RI verbs (only

eventive RIs; their stative verbs are always finite). Now, be is clearly a stative verb, as it is

normally incompatible with progressive aspect even when it expresses stage-level (noninherent)

predication.

(13) *John is being sick26

Since be is stative, and since we have independently discussed the fact that null be is

nonfinite, we would expect children acquiring Dutch (or German) not to produce utterances with

null be. However, this is clearly not the case, as we find many examples of null be declaratives in

child Dutch and German.

(14) a. Ah, mein strasse maputt!

Oh, my street (is) broken

26Be does occur in progressive aspect when it expresses intentionality, e.g. John is being obnoxious/gratious. For

the moment I will leave this fact aside, but note that the adjective expresses a nonpermanent or noninherent property

of John, so be would appear to have an eventive interpretation in this case.

38

b. Hanna das Mama

Hanna (is) the mommy

c. Teddy unter dem tisch

Teddy (is) under the table (Becker 1995)

However it is significant that children almost never produce the infinitive form of the

copula (e.g. @Johanna gross sein 'Johanna be big', this is also true for child English). Since a

null copula fails to show infinitive morphology, just like English bare verbs, null copular

expressions in child Germanic may be analogous to English RIs. If this is the case, null copular

expressions should not show the modal reference effect. The data do suggest that this is the case.

Neither the utterances in (4) nor those in (5-7) from Andreas (Wagner 1985) have a modal

interpretation.

(15) ja das nicht Gonzales

yes that not Gonzales (=a toy)

(16) nein ich ein Froschkönig

no I a frog-king

(17) mein das

mine that

Recall that the rate of modal reference for nonfinite main verbs in child German ranged from 57%

to 100%, and in child Dutch it was 86% on average. So the German data are suggestive of a

connection between German/Dutch null copular expressions and English bare verb RIs (namely a

lack of modal interpretation).

To sum up, the English data show that null be utterances pattern with regular main verb RI

expressions: both null be and main verb RI utterances occur with either a bare N or a full DP

subject, while finite main verbs and overt (inflected) be occur only with full DP subjects. Thus null

be appears to be nonfinite, on par with main verb RIs. However it is not yet known whether the

same correlation holds for null be in child Germanic. This question is highly relevant because we

have seen that null be in child German patterns with English RIs in its lack of modal reference. We

39

should find out whether German/Dutch null be patterns with English RIs or German/Dutch RIs in

terms of its occurrence with full DP subjects.

3. Other topics/Plan

I hope to look at be-omission data in other languages as well, in particular Spanish,

German, Italian and possibly Hebrew. The Spanish data are particularly suggestive and I will be

looking at earlier Spanish data with John Grinstead (in particular to see about omission patterns).

German and Italian are useful because they both exhibit auxiliary selection (have or be) in

past participle constructions, and in both of these languages the past participle is the more common

expression of past tense than the simple past form. Thus we can look at whether there are

differences in the overtness/finiteness of auxiliary be vs. auxiliary have in past participles (which

we cannot look at in English for obvious reasons). Furthermore, it will be interesting to compare

German with Italian, since child German shows a robust effect of Root Infinitives, while Italian

does not (there are almost no RIs in child Italian).

Plan

Spring/Summer 1999:

•Review literature on passives (Borer & Wexler 1987 & 1994, Baker, Johnson & Roberts 1989) &

raising to try to understand how children learn which constructions involve raising (A-movement).

•English data:

•go through adjectival predicatives more carefully & see whether kids are making a

temporary/permanent distinction or an inherent/noninherent distinction, or something else.

•go through there- and here- constructions and separate true existentials from deictic

there/here sentences

•Spanish data:

•check for early omission patterns with John Grinstead (based on English data & ser/estar

distinction, I expect to find more omissions of estar)

40

•read more about ser/estar distinction to try to understand the nature of the temporal

restrictions on copular constructions; this should help us understand whether children's

omission patterns reflect an underlying distinction between inherent & noninherent property

predication.

•Continue background reading on acquisition: Brown, Stromswold...

•Review some diachronic syntax literature (e.g. Roberts) to better understand the process of

grammaticalization and semantic bleaching, to try to understand how children learn which

verbs/functional items are bleached (high frequency & large number of syntactic frames?)

•Think about possible experiments (imitation tasks?)

Summer/Fall 1999:

•Continue background reading: Heycock, Kratzer, typology; try to understand the nature of

temporal restrictions/distinctions in copular constructions in adult grammar. Also: read McNally

(others?) to understand semantics of existentials; connections between existentials and

identificationals. Finish reading Moro.

•Look at contracted be and metrical accounts of be omission

•German & Italian data, aspect (tie in Antinucci & Miller?) (Hebrew?)

•English data

•check older children's data for later patterns, younger children's data for earlier patterns

(pseudoclefts in older kids?)

•Perform experiments or collect more data (if necessary) and/or work on computational model

Fall 1999/Winter 2000:

•finish up any data collection/analysis

•continue reading, begin organizing & writing dissertation

Winter/Spring 2000:

•continue writing; aim to finish in spring 2000

41

Appendix: More on the linguistic typology of copular constructions

A.1 Classical Chinese

Classical Chinese expresses existence via the copular element you, translated as 'there is'

or 'have'. Its negation is a suppletive form, wu 'there is not', 'there lacks'. While you can be used

for inalienable possession (to have a property, e.g. color or shape), I do not know whether it can

be used for alienable possession. For expressing predication, Chinese uses the "particle" (I'm not

sure if it is a copula) yeh, as in (1):

(1) Yü jen yeh

I man yeh (Graham 1967)

The particle yeh is negated by the negative copula fei. Sentences with yeh sometimes use shih

instead, and such sentences (with yeh or shih) reportedly do not express any temporal reference.

Classical Chinese has a different copula for expressing identity: chi. I have only one

example of an utterance with chi, wherein it occurs with yeh; so I don't know whether chi must

always occur with yeh:

(2) Tao chi hsing yeh.

way chi nature yeh

"The Way is human nature." Graham 1967, p. 11

To express adjectival predication, the adjective itself acts as a verb, so no copula is used (this is

similar to the verbal behavior of adjectives in Japanese). For expressing location there is a different

copula, tsai 'is in.'

A.2 West Greenlandic Eskimo

Eskimo, a polysynthetic language, has a number of suffixes that function as copulas (they

are suffixes to the root but may be followed by other suffixes). I will only give a description of a

42

few of them. The copular suffixes are denominals; that is, they turn nouns into verbs. One of them

is -u-, which seems to be a kind of inchoative, meaning 'causing to be'.

(3) sikûvoq 'it is ice-covered' (siko = ice) Mey 1968, p.19

There are also a few independent (i.e. non-affixal) verbs (ilivoq 'be in a state, be such' and isivoq

'become, get into a state') and one "semi-independent" verb (-)ípoq meaning 'to be', which can

also be realized as the suffix -it-. For example:

(4) taimáitoq 'it being thus', taimailivoq 'is, becomes like that' (from taima 'thus')

Mey 1968, p. 20

The application of -it- and (-)ípoq is more restricted than the application of -u-, since -it-/(-)ípoq

can only apply to certain adverbs and nominals, "cases expressing quality, manner, location" (Mey

1968, p. 20).

Both -u- and -it- serve to link a property to a subject. In addition there is an existential

suffix, -qar-, which can be translated as 'there is' or as 'has'.

(5) ateqarpunga 'I have the name...', 'my name is...' (from ateq 'name')

The suffix -qar- also seems to be used in creating passives, but the examples are too unclear. Both

-u- and -qar- seem to have a much less restricted application than -it-/(-)ípoq. Similar to Classical

Chinese wu 'there is not, lacks', Greenlandic has a negative copula suffix -it- (it has different

morphophonemic properties from the -it- discussed earlier) meaning 'to be without'.

A.3 Malayalam

Malayalam, a Dravidian language, has three verbs that are used as copulas. One is aan ,́

which is used in nominal (and some adjectival) predicative sentences, to express identity and

location. It can be optionally omitted in all of these contexts (Asher 1968). A second copula, unt ,́

43

which appears in existential, locative and possessive constructions (in possessives the possessor is

marked with Dative case). Both aan ́and unt ́can be used in psych-verb constructions and

locatives, and in each case the choice of the copula yields slightly different shades of meaning. (I

don't understand yet exactly what the differences are.) The third copula is irikkuka, which can be

glossed as 'sit'. It has more a meaning of 'staying in a place'.

The negative forms of unt ́and ann ́are suppletive: ann ́becomes alla, and unt ́becomes

illa . Main verbs are suffixed with -illa to the root when negated. Interestingly, the form irikkunnu

(a form of irikkuka 'be/stay/sit') is added to a past tense verb to form the perfective, and unt´

occurs with a present tense verb to form the progressive.

(6) a. [aa] ceriya kettitam abdulkhaadar vaatakaykku kotuttirikkunnu

that small building Abdulkhadar rent/to given/has

"Abdulkhadar has rented out that small building."

b. ellaarum enne nookkunnunt´

all me look at

"They are all looking at me." both exx. from Asher 1968, p.109

These facts are in line with something Benveniste (1966) noted about auxiliary verbs in both

Iranian and Classical Armenian: namely, in both possessives and past participles, the verb is be,

and the subject/possessor is marked with oblique case (Dative for Iranian, Genitive for Armenian).

What this shows is that the connection between auxiliary verbs such as be and have, and their

"main verb counterparts", i.e. verbs that express existence and possession, is in fact a robust

connection that holds across languages (English, Malayalam, Iranian, Armenian), and it is

probably not coincidental.

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