Equative

The term equative is used in linguistics to refer to constructions where two entities are equated with each other. For example, the sentence Susan is our president, equates two entities (Susan and our president). In English, equatives are typically expressed using a copular verb such as "be" (although this is not the only use of this verb). Equatives can be contrasted with predicative constructions where one entity is identified as a member of a set (e.g. Susan is a president).

Note that the term equative is also sometimes applied to comparative-like constructions in which the degrees compared are identical rather than distinct: e.g., John is as stupid as he is fat.

See also

Equative case

References

• Benveniste, Emile (1966a) "The Linguistic functions of 'to be' and 'to have' Problems in General linguistics English edition (1970) Miami Linguistics Series 8. University of Miami Press. 163-180.

• Benveniste, Emile (1966b) "The nominal sentence" Problems in General linguistics English edition (1970) Miami Linguistics Series 8. University of Miami Press. 131-144.

• Berman, Ruth and Alexander Grosu (1976) "Aspects of the Copula in Modern Hebrew" in Peter Cole (ed.) Studies in Modern Hebrew Syntax and Semantics The transformational-generative approach. North Holland Publishing Co. Amsterdam. 265-285.

• Carnie, Andrew (1996) Head-Movement and Non-Verbal Predication. Ph.D. Dissertation MIT.

• DeGraff, Michel (1992) "The Syntax of Predication in Haitian" in Proceedings of NELS 22, 103-117. (Distributed by GLSA)

• Doron, Edit (1986) "The Pronominal 'copula' as agreement clitic" The Syntax of Pronominal Clitics, Syntax and Semantics 19 .Academic Press. New York. 313-332.

• Heggie, Lorie (1988) The Syntax of Copular Structures Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Southern California.

• Rapoport, Tova (1987) Copular Nominal and Small Clauses Ph.D. Dissertation, MIT

• Rothstein, Susan (1987) "Three forms of English be" MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 9, 225-236.

• Zaring, Lorie (1994) “Two “be” or not two “be” Identity, Predication and the Welsh Copula” Ms. Carlton College.