What a nominal predicate may mean: eel, merfolk, and other creatures

Abstract

A nominal predicate construction (NPC; e.g. “Cicero is {Tully/an orator}”) typically indicates the relation of identity or inclusion. NPCs, however, may receive marked interpretations as well, as in “I’m the ham sandwich” and “Their car is a peculiar color”; the former does not entail that the speaker is identical to the sandwich, and the latter does not entail that the car belongs to a set of colors. This article identifies, classifies, and analyzes such marked NPCs in English and Japanese, thereby enriching the taxonomy of NPCs acknowledged in the existing literature. It will be argued that both Japanese and English NPCs may indicate either (i) one of a handful of relatively specific semantic relations including the one of identity/inclusion, or (ii) an unspecified relation that is to be contextually inferred. The English NPC is semantically less flexible than the Japanese one, being compatible with a narrower range of specific semantic relations and allowing the unspecified-relation interpretation less leniently. The English NPC, on the other hand, is more liberally used in comparison to its counterparts in some related languages (e.g. German). The analysis put forth makes a good vantage point for general-linguistic and typological inquiries as to how languages in general may contrast with each other in terms of what types of situations can be described with a NPC.