Non-Verbal Predication in Irish: A Reanalysis

This paper presents a reanalysis of non-verbal predication in Irish. The previous analyses involving head movement of a maximal projection (esp. Carnie, 1995) are outlined & shown to be empirically inadequate & theoretically undesirable. An alternative analysis is proposed in which the non-verbal predicate undergoes XP movement to the specifier of TP, following an analysis of Niuean non-verbal predication (Massam & Smallwood, 1996). The three arguments employed in the previous analyses to support head movement of the non-verbal predicate are examined & rejected. Particular attention is paid to the impossibility of extraction out of the non-verbal predicate, which is shown to follow from the independently motivated process of obligatory predicate reconstruction. The paper concludes with a consideration of the cross-linguistic implications of the analysis. 22 References. Adapted from the source document