Non-verbal Predication in the World’s Languages : A Typological Survey Volume 2: Africa, Austronesia, Papunesia, Australia

The notion of predication is usually associated with the lexical class of verbs. However, the predicate function may also be expressed by Noun / Adjective / Adverb / Quantifier Phrases: a. John is a doctor.

b. The man is old. c.

The boys are in the garden. d. Sam's friends are many.

Natural languages do, with respect to non-verbal predication, what they are expected to do in any compartment of grammar: they sharply diverge in their behavior. This book offers a wide typological overview of how languages deal with non-verbal predication (henceforth: NVP). After the pioneering works by Hengeveld (1992) and Stassen (1997), no other work has attempted to provide a comprehensive overview of this pervasive syntactic phenomenon.

Hence, the need for this book. The introductory chapter highlights the main features to be considered: the lexical and morphosyntactic nature of the predicate. the morphological expression of NVP.

the semantic types of NVP. The bulk of the book consists of a collection of papers, written by well-known specialists, targeting different languages or language families, thus offering a rich array of typological data. This book will be of interest to typologists, syntacticians of any theoretical creed, and students of linguistics at large.