On predication

This paper discusses copula constructions in English, German, and Danish and argues that a uniformanalysis of all copula constructions is inappropriate. I provide evidence from German that thereshould be a raising variant of the copula in addition to an identificational copula. A unary schemais provided that maps referential NPs that can be used as arguments onto predicational NPs. Datafrom Danish shows that predicational NPs can be subjects in specificational structures. An accountfor such specificational structures is provided and the different behaviour of predicational andspecificational structures with regard to question tags is explained. A similar contrast can befound in German left dislocation structures, which follows from the assumptions made in this paper.A modified treatment of complex predicate formation allows for a reduction of selectional features(that is abolishing of xcomp or vcomp) and for a uniform treatment of predicationalphrases in copula constructions and resultative secondary predicates. This yields an account forconstituent order variants that remained unexplained by earlier analyses.