Non-verbal predication in the world’s Languages: A typological survey

The multi-volume work Non-verbal predication in the world’s Languages: A typological survey results from the collaboration of 40 scholars from all over the world over more than five years. The book consists of two volumes with a total of about 1,300 pages plus supplementary materials. It has appeared in the series Comparative Handbooks of Linguistics, by De Gruyter Mouton, and we hope that it will serve as a useful reference on non-verbal predication for years to come. Its 33 chapters, written by leading specialists, present a new typological framework for the study of non-verbal predication and provide detailed descriptions from selected languages and families across Eurasia, the Americas, Africa, and Oceania. Particular attention is given to languages from traditionally little-described families.

The notion of predication is usually associated with the lexical class of verbs. However, the predicate function may also be expressed by Noun / Adjective / Adverb / Quantifier Phrases: a. John is a doctor. b. The man is old. c. The boys are in the garden. d. Sam's friends are many. Natural languages do, with respect to non-verbal predication, what they are expected to do in any compartment of grammar: they sharply diverge in their behavior. This book offers a wide typological overview of how languages deal with non-verbal predication (henceforth: NVP). After the pioneering works by Hengeveld (1992) and Stassen (1997), no other work has attempted to provide a comprehensive overview of this pervasive syntactic phenomenon. Hence, the need for this book.

The introductory chapter highlights the main features to be considered: (i) the lexical and morphosyntactic nature of the predicate; (ii) the morphological expression of NVP; (iii) the semantic types of NVP. The bulk of the book consists of a collection of papers, written by well-known specialists, targeting different languages or language families, thus offering a rich array of typological data. This book will be of interest to typologists, syntacticians of any theoretical creed, and students of linguistics at large.

Bertinetto, Pier Marco, Luca Ciucci & Denis Creissels (eds.). 2026. Non-verbal predication in the world’s languages: A typological survey. Volume 1: Eurasia, North America, South America (Comparative Handbooks of Linguistics 9). Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110730982

Bertinetto, Pier Marco, Luca Ciucci & Denis Creissels (eds.). 2026. Non-verbal predication in the world’s languages: A typological survey. Volume 2: Africa, Austronesia, Papunesia, Australia (Comparative Handbooks of Linguistics 9). Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783112209677