Languages have various ways of linking between the subject and the predicate. In many languages, the copular verb is the principal way of linking, though this is not the universally the case. Some appear in the form of suffixes and others in the form of words. One of the purposes of the study is to show the various ways of linking among languages with some examples. Another purpose is to show that there are many instances of zero (phonologically null) copula constructions cross-linguistically. The last purpose is to provide syntactic, semantic and pragmatic explanation for the zero copula constructions. We will argue that the dichotomy of stage-level and individual level predicates plays the core role for the zero copula constructions.

• 오명기(강원대학교)