A fundamental question concerning copular constructions is whether there is a distinction between equative/equational and predicational sentences, and if so, where the distinction is located. We argue that recent attempts to reduce equative constructions to "inverted" predications are unsuccessful, and that a distinction between equative and predicational sentences must be maintained. On the other hand, we argue that the apparent syntactic and thematic distinction between true equative sentences and "specificational" sentences is not syntactic in nature.
The attempt to reduce equative constructions to inverted predications-where the precopular NP is the predicate and the postcopular NP the subject-relies on examples such as (1). There are a number of semantic and syntactic
(1)
The culprit was John.
motivations for the inversion analysis. Semantically, it appears to capture the asymmetry in the interpretation of the two NPs. Syntactically, it has been argued to explain why the second NP resists extraction and subextraction, and why a quantifier in this position cannot take wide scope. We argue, however, that the island effect is not restricted to the second NP as predicted by this analysis, and that the apparent narrow scope of the second NP is in fact a reflex of the fact that true quantifiers cannot appear in this position at all-a fact better explained by an equative analysis (in which the semantic type of the two NPs must be identical). Further, we demonstrate that apparent inverted predications are only possible when an equative interpretation is available.
