The most common and obvious examples of predication are verbial. This is the sort exhibited in the prototypical “sentence” consisting of of subject, verb, and objects. While there are other kinds of predication in English, only this verbial variety is spelled out grammatically. In Danic this is not the case. Nominal and Adjectival predication statements do not appear verbially in Danic as in English, but instead have unique structures. Let us discuss each, below.
When the predicate to a subject is a nominal, it is as much as to say that the subject is specified as or equated to another nominal. English, which formally only exhibits verbial predication, accomplishes this nominal sort by representing the nominal predicate as a direct object of a copular verb.
Danic does not make use of copulas 1 . Danic sentences do not require the presence of overt verbs, and so accomplishes nominal predication differently. In a simple nominally-predicating sentence, both the subject and the predicate nominals are found in the Nominative case 2 , and the predicate is indicated by being directly proceded by a particle that can be thought of as a “predicate marker.”
Examples:
1) English JAMES IS MY BROTHER.
subject copula predicate
2) Danic JEYMZ SIP UL AB.
subject predicate particle
As with nominal predicates, English makes use of the copula to introduce adjectival predicates. Also as with nominal predicates, Danic diverges from English in this respect. Danic makes use of a special strategy to accomplish adjectival predication. Rather than using a predicate-marker particle as it does with nominals, Danic employs a structural arrangement unique to adjectives.
The formula is simple and as follows: the adjective appears not in its usual post-nominal position, but rather it is strictly and directly pre-nominal, and appears in bare form with no agreement marking.
Examples:
3) English THE DOG IS HAPPY.
subject copula predicate
4) Danic KROSHA SEN.
predicate subject
“The dog is happy.”
5) Danic SEN KROSHATH
“the happy dog”
This unusual behavior is worthy of some further discussion. In addition to the unusual (and unusually inflexible) word ordering, it is interesting that such predications can take tense/aspect marking (that follows the noun). This is distinct from the above-discussed nominal predication, which does not take tense/aspect markers and is always assumed present indicative stative. 3 This tempts many to dub the predicate adjective a verbial.
While there are obviously several compelling motivations for this claim, it leaves open the questions of case and word order. As a verb, the predicative adjective would be quite a deficient one. It does not take conjugation morphology. It would be intransitive, yet does not take intranstive morphology. It requires a pre-nominal position, in opposition to the preferred sentence-final location of typical verbs -- and its tense/aspect particle cannot accompany it to this pre-nominal position. The status of predicative adjectives is, at best, a complicated issue, and one left to interested parties for further investigation.
The preceding discussion becomes especiall important, at least grammatically if not semantically, when a predication statement is considered within a larger sentence. As with English, a full predicate statement modifying an argument as a clause within a matrix results in a restrictive relative clause.
Also as with English, a typical Danic relative clause consiting of a verbial predication statement is introduced by a relativizer -- that is, a word such as “that” or “which” or “who/whom.” But, since Danic has non-verbial predication strategies, the matter of restrictive relative clauses becomes more complicated. Nominal and adjectival predications as relative clauses do not require relativizers. They appear simply embedded in the matrix alongside the argument they take as their subject.
Of particular note is the prominance of nominal predicates as restrictive relative clauses in Danic. This sort of arrangement is unusual in English, but very common in Danic sentences. Why is this the case? For the answer, consider the function of a restrictive relative clause. Very roughly, a restrictive relative clause is used to modify an argument when the argument is not sufficiently particular as to its referent. In the sentence “The dog that wins the race will receive a treat”, the subject “the dog” is not specific enough to express the idea of what will receive a treat. It is not just “the dog,” but rather it is the particular dog that “wins the race.”
In nominally predicating restrictive relative clauses, the predicate nominal might be seen as a particular instance of the more general category expressed by the subject of the predication. Where this is the case, what benefit is there in referencing the “more general category” at all? Consider another example.
6) English [THE MAN] [WHO IS MY BROTHER] [WROTE A LETTER TO ME].
matrix subject relative clause matrix predicate
[THE MAN WHO] [IS MY BROTHER] WROTE A LETTER TO ME.
clause subject clause predicate
The reason such a sentence seems unnatural is simple. The subject of the clausal predication provides no relevant information to the predicate of that same clause. It is already clear that “my brother” is a man -- it is in the definition of “brother” to be male! In fact, with English, this will almost always be the case. Nothing is accomplished by what is, in the end, defining the category to which the clausal predicate nominal belongs. And so English sentences simply cut right to the chase and say, simply,
7) English MY BROTHER WROTE A LETTER TO ME.
But where English usually does not require such information, a language such as Danic quite often does. Consider an analogous example, here translated into English for illustration.
8) Danic THE MAN WHO IS MY SIBLING WROTE TO ME A LETTER.
In Danic, “the man who is my sibling” is the only way of saying “my brother.” 4 The word for “sibling” is too general to convey the information that the intended referent is male, and when this information is relevant to the utterance it is natural and indeed compulsory to utilize the restrictive relative clause with nominal predication.5
Adjectival predicates also appear as restrictive relative clauses. Because the semantics of such a clause is complicated and difficult to illustrate in the limited space accorded to this section, the behavior of these adjectival predicates will not be discussed.
The subject of predication statements in Danic is an area frought with complication and deserves further examination.