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The syntax of copular constructions in Mauritian



This paper examines the syntactic behavior of the Mauritian copula in predicative
and extracted sentences. As it is the case in many languages, the Mauritian
copula ete is absent in certain constructions: It only appears in extraction contexts.
Our aim is to show that the postulation of a null copula, which has been proposed
in various analyses, is inadequate for the Mauritian data. The phenomenon, as
it is argued, rather lends itself to a strictly construction-based analysis within the
framework of HPSG and is based on the distribution of weak pronouns and TAM
markers.