Predication and identity in copular sentences
There are different types of copular sentence. \textit{Cicero is tall} does not mean the same thing as \textit{Cicero is Tully}. The former is typically called a predication and the latter an identity. But where does this difference come from (and the difference between these sentences and \textit{Cicero is a Roman statesman}, \textit{This is Cicero}, and \textit{The culprit was Cicero} for that matter)? This thesis is an attempt to bring the combined forces of modern linguistics and philosophy together to understand how we make meaningfully distinct sentences. It is useful to focus on copular sentences for this task because they are the minimally-sized sentences in many of the world's languages. A debate in linguistics has persisted for some years about the status of sentences like \textit{The culprit was Cicero}, in particular, in terms of whether they should be aligned with predications or identities. The linguistic evidence points in different directions. I think there are conceptual clarifications that could elucidate the terms of this debate. I start by investigating the obvious logical starting point: logic. Can copular sentences really be exhaustively specified as logical predications or identities
Woodard, Andrew
Predication and identity in copular sentences. There are different types of copular sentence. \textit{Cicero is tall} does not mean the same thing as \textit{Cicero is Tully}. The former is typically called a predication and the latter an identity. But where does this difference come from (and the difference between these sentences and \textit{Cicero is a Roman statesman}, \textit{This is Cicero}, and \textit{The culprit was Cicero} for that matter)? This thesis is an attempt to bring the combined forces of modern linguistics and philosophy together to understand how we make meaningfully distinct sentences. It is useful to focus on copular sentences for this task because they are the minimally-sized sentences in many of the world's languages. A debate in linguistics has persisted for some years about the status of sentences like \textit{The culprit was Cicero}, in particular, in terms of whether they should be aligned with predications or identities. The linguistic evidence points in different directions. I think there are conceptual clarifications that could elucidate the terms of this debate. I start by investigating the obvious logical starting point: logic. Can copular sentences really be exhaustively specified as logical predications or identities
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