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The Linguistics of Olfaction: Typological and Diachronic Approaches to Synchronic Diversity
Edited by Łukasz Jędrzejowski and Przemysław Staniewski
[Typological Studies in Language 131] 2021
► pp. 403–448

To what extent can source-based olfactory verbs be classified as copulas?

The case of German and Polish

| University of Wrocław
| University of Wrocław

In recent decades, there has been growing interest in the semantics and syntax of perception verbs in various languages. This has led to establishing a widely accepted classification in activity, experiencer- and source-based verbs – also labelled copulative. This chapter deals with the latter category in the olfactory domain in German and Polish. It provides a general theoretical discussion of the copulas, the perception verbs and their interfaces. Further, it focuses on the main four construction types in which the source-based olfactory verbs can occur in order to determine, based on their contextual embedding, if they qualify as copulas. Ultimately, the influence of regarding the source-based verbs as (non-)copulas for the description of the olfactory perception is pointed out.

Keywords: semantics-syntax interfaces, copula verbs, perception verbs, German, Polish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Copula verbs
  • 3.Perception verbs
  • 4.Perception verbs – Copulas, semi-copulas or pseudo-copulas?
  • 5.Analysis
    • 5.1Subject construction
      • 5.1.1 Constructions of the type subject + source-based smell verb + adjective/adverb
      • 5.1.2 Construction of the type subject + source-based smell verb
      • 5.1.3 Construction of the type subject + source-based smell verb + prepositional phrase/instrumental noun phrase
    • 5.2Impersonal construction
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Abbreviations
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 26 April 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.131.14sta
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