Morphosyntax Constructions of the World's Languages

Semantic classes other than events may be predicated of a referent; this is nonprototypical predication. The primary nonprototypical predication types are object predication, property predication, predicational location, and predicational possession. In addition, clauses may express different information packaging than topic--comment (= referent--predication) packaging. The two main types of nonpredicational information packaging with nonprototypical predication are equational -- a subtype of identificational and found with object concepts -- and presentational -- a subtype of thetic and found especially with location and possession clauses. Strategies for all types of predication are recruited from action predication, predicational location, and possibly equational clause constructions; however, predicational possession has not been surveyed crosslinguistically. Presentational location and possession constructions employ a range of strategies ranging from recruitment of a verb form to expressing the location or possession itself as a verbal form.