ATTRIBUTIVES AND IDENTIFICATIONALS 441(20) Giovanni èlha stato professore.
Giovanni is/has been professor
"Giovanni was/has been a professor."
(21) Giovanni èlha stato felice.
Giovanni is/has been happy
"Giovanni was/has been happy."
Attributive and identificational constructions are therefore interesting
because (i) in some languages, they pattern as a class with respect to the
subjective-objective distinction but may go with either subjectives (as in
French and Russian) or primarily with objectives (as in Dakota), and (ii)
they may split between objective and subjective patterns according to dif
ferent diagnostics, as they do in Italian.
2. The thematic structure of attributive and identificational constructions
2.1 A localistic thematic analysis
One thematic analysis of attributive constructions is to assume that the
single argument of the attributive or identificational predicate is a theme
and that this theme is being located within the attribute or identification-
set. Thus, for example, the sentence Sam is tall locates the individual refer
red to as Sam in the relevant class of tall entities. This is essentially the posi
tion taken in most localist analyses of these constructions, including Ander
son (1971), Gruber (1967), Jackendoff (1976, 1983). Gruber and Jacken
doff explicitly identify two thematic relations associated with such construc
tions: the single argument of the predication, which is taken to be theme,
and another relation which is taken to be locative; this can be represented
as in (22).
(22) BEIDENT (x, y)
I I
Theme Loc
This would initially seem to be at odds with the traditional logical rep
resentation of the meaning of these structures (and also with the position
taken on attributives in Foley & Van Valin 1984), in which the attribute is
taken to be a predicate and there is only a single argument, the subject,
which is identified as patient rather than theme. However, this isn't neces-