Polish equatives as symmetrical structures
The chapter focuses on the syntactic structure of true equatives in Polish, i.e. those sentences that contain two proper names or two pronouns flanking the pronominal copula
to
. These clauses differ considerably from both predicational and specificational sentences as regards verbal agreement and the Person-Case Constraint (PCC). Arguments are offered to prove that the two differences Polish equatives exhibit can be accounted for by positing a special symmetrical structure for this type of copular clause. The analysis is a modified version of Pereltsvaig’s (2001, 2007) proposal, based on Moro (2006) as well as Chomsky (2013). It relies on movement of one of the DPs from within a symmetrical structure to break up the initial symmetry which is triggered by the the need to label the symmetrical structure.
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