Rethinking predicative clauses with indefinite predicate and specificational clauses with indefinite variable: A cognitive-functional account

This article focuses on English predicative clauses with indefinite predicate nominative and specificational clauses with an indefinite variable NP. Within a cognitive-functional framework, we develop an alternative to the position that specification is based on the nominal predication relation between a referential NP and a non-referential ‘property’ NP, which it inverts by focussing on the former (Patten 2012, 2016). We show that, instead, the two types have different process-participant relations and indefinite NPs with a different referential status. Predicative clauses are intransitive: only the subject is a participant, while the non-referential complement specifies the content of the clausal predicate (Langacker 1991, 2015). Specificational clauses are transitive configurations whose participants stand in a relation of ‘criteria-meeting’, or ‘bill-filling’ (Austin [1952-1953] 1970): the variable designates an abstract criterial entity and the value the more concrete entities meeting these criteria. The indefinite variable NP has dual reference to a generalized instance and an implied actual instance, triggering a pragmatic presupposition of existence and an implicature of exclusiveness. We show, following Van Praet & O’Grady (2018), that the oft-assumed conflation between variable-value and informational presupposition-focus cannot be maintained, since specificational copulars typically have prosodically marked information focus on both the variable and the value.status: Published onlin