Syntactic Analysis of the Development and Derivation of Double Copular Constructions

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This study clarify syntactic properties of double copular constructions, which are unique in that they invlove the sequence of copular verbs like is is. Specifically, this study presents an analysis where the second copular verbs are grammaticalized into focus markers. In addition, following the analysis of Gelderen (2008), where grammaticalization usually involves the reanalysis of semantic features, the present analysis accounts for the derivation of double copular constructions. It is argued that semantic features of the second copular verbs are reanalyzed in double copular constructions, so that the copular verbs appear in FocusP and are adjoined to the subsequent clauses.