Isomorphic co-expression of nominal predication subdomains: An Indo-Iranian case study

Abstract

Abstract This paper explores the isomorphic co-expression of nominal predication subdomains across ten Indo-Iranian languages. Unlike many previous studies, this paper takes into account combinations of structural coding means, and does not limit its scope to the copula. Further this paper does not limit its attention to “primary” strategies and also takes into account “secondary” or “rare” attested strategies. Then, this paper presents a method based on bipartite graphs to visualize and compare patterns by which two subdomains of nominal predication are co-expressed by isomorphic combinations of coding means. The results show that every pair of subdomains is co-expressed at least somewhere across the family. In five of the ten languages studied here, predicative possession is expressed by the coding means usually used for equation or proper inclusion, but never as the main strategy to express predicative possession. This suggests that unlike what scholars have so far assumed, such situations may be crosslinguistically common but intra-linguistically rare. Another surprising result is the rare isomorphic co-expression of predicative possession and predicate location (i. e. with completely identical morphosyntax), but the much more common co-expression of predicative possession and existence. Altogether, this paper highlights the importance of taking into account intra-linguistic variation in morphosyntactic comparison.