The New Classification Of Be In English: A Generative Approach

In the literature, the status of be is far from clear. The copula be is regarded as a two-place predicate in traditional Chinese grammar (Li 1972, Tsao 1996, Cheng 2002, etc.). The function of predicate is defined to express a certain relationship between two participants. In generative syntax, a copula is analyzed as what lacks lexical-semantic content. And it does not need any participants to fill the gaps of the semantically incomplete predicate. Therefore be is not a predicate at all, but belongs to a functional category. Bowers (1993) regards be as a Pr (predication), head of a functional category, considering that modal verbs can appear before the copula, as shown in (1):(1) John may/must/could be insane/a good fellow.Becker (2004) further analyzes copula and assumes that be falls into two categories: Infl be and the main verb be. Although difference exists between Bowers (1993) and Becker (2004), they all assume that be selects a small clause (SC) as its complement. In this thesis, we argue that copula be is a light verb v-he, selecting a NP, AP or PP as its complement instead of a small clause.We assume that be falls into two categories: Aux be and the Verbal be. We suggest that the Verbal be could be further classified into the main verb V-be and the light verb v-be with Lasnik's (2003) hybrid approach which assumes (i) that the main verb V-be is bare in the lexicon, and can merge with the affixal Infl at PF under adjacency condition; and (ii) that the light verb v-be is pulled from the lexicon fully inflected, and must be checked against the strong featural Infl through overt raising. We propose that be can be classified as follows:...