Copulas and light verbs as spellouts of argument structure

Abstract

Dene (Athapaskan) languages typically have a small inventory of semantically light verbs. This chapter demonstrates that their interpretations derive wholly from their syntactic context in predictable ways and proposes these verbs are spellouts of morphosyntactic structure with either semantically vacuous roots or none at all. They are shown to form a cline of structural complexity and it is suggested that some of the cross-linguistic semantic variability observed in light verbs may originate from this structural variation. Additionally, since these verbs serve as matrix verbs of full clauses, they cast doubt on claims that light verbs are syntactically dependent on main verbs. The extreme semantic impoverishment and configurational relatedness of these verbs suggests that they are a unified class. Two of them are commonly termed copulas; the data and analysis presented here, however, suggest that a principled distinction between copulas and light verbs may ultimately be illusory.