6 R.M.W. Dixon
TABLE i. Basic clause types
an intransitive predicate may be a verb or an adjective or a noun or a pronoun or
even an NP. For example, in Boumaa Fijian one can say (Dixon 1988):
(i) [e [tagane balavu]mAD]PREDlca:E [a tama-qu]s
3sgS man tall ARTICLE father-isg.POSSESSOR
'my father is a tall man
(1) is an intransitive clause with a tama-qu as the S argument. The predicate head
here is an NP consisting of noun tagane 'man and adjective balavu 'tall'. It is pre-
ceded within the predicate by the 3sg subject pronoun e, just as a verb in this slot
would be. Although the idiomatic translation is 'My father is a tall man', in fact
tagane balavu functions as predicate head (like a verb), literally: 'My father tall-
man-s'.
It is important to distinguish between an intransitive clause like (i)—where a
non-verbal element functions as predicate head—and a copula clause—where the
same element might function as a core argument in copula complement function.
We can compare the two clause types in Tariana, a language from the Arawak fam-
ily (data from Alexandra Aikhenvald; and see the fuller discussion in Chapter 4):
(2) (a) namu(-ne) sfdanaINTRANsmvKPREDICAT
evil.spirit(-FOCUSED.A/s/cs) big-NCl:animate-REMOTE.PAST:REPORTED
'the evil spirit was said to be big'
(b) namu(-ne)cs hanu-itecc
evil.spirit(-FOCUSED.A/s/cs) big-NCI:animate
di-dia-pidanaCOPULAfREDlCATE
3sg.non.femCS-become-REMOTE.PAST:REPORTED
'the evil spirit was said to become big'
In (ia), the adjective hanu 'big' is head of the intransitive predicate, and takes a
tense-evidentiality suffix (just as a verb would do in this slot). In (ib), hanu is the
copula complement, an argument outside the predicate of the clause; the predicate
is here copula verb -dia- 'become', and it is this which carries the tense-evidenti-
ality marker, -pidana. (In all its occurrences here, hanu carries the animate noun
class suffix, -tie.)
The possibilities for case marking on arguments in Tariana are:
Clause type Nucleus Core arguments
Transitive clause Transitive predicate Transitive subject (A) and transitive
object (O)
intransitive clause Intransitive predicate Intransitive subject (S)
Copula clause Copula predicate (copula Copula subject (CS) and copula
verb) complement (CC)
s