Notes on the functional and compositional restrictions of specificational copulatives

Abstract

In this article, we analyze sentences mediated by the copula verb ‘ser’ and flanked by two determiner phrases (DPs). We aim to describe copulatives structured in this way and classified as specificational, motivating two of their restrictions: specificationals have restricted use and their first position limits the occurrence of indefinite DPs. In the analysis, we compare specificational copulatives to other copulatives that can be flanked by DPs, the predicatives, in order to have as a parameter a syntactic environment in which the restrictions do not occur. We verify the behavior of the copulatives through coordination and juxtaposition of sentences, adequacy to the structure ‘x says about DP that...’, by the capacity of occurrence of the modifier ‘certo’ in their composition, by question-answer pairs and from the classification of discursive familiarity. We conclude that the value of referentiality/specificity and the ordering of the DPs of specificationals disfavor the use of such copulatives in the topic-comment function. We found that they are marked sentences, specialized for contexts in which they have a presupposition-focus function. As for the composition restriction, we concluded that it arises from the fact that the pre-verbal DP must be composed of old elements in the discourse, which is in line with the finding that this DP conveys information in pragmatic presupposition.