DP in Copular Sentences

This paper claims that there is only one copular verb be and all copular constructions share the same structure. In English, predicational copular sentences and specificational copular sentences show the difference on the basis of whether pre-copula DP Head and post-copula DP Head have [definite] feature or not, driven by semantic properties of the DP HEAD. This argument is distinguished from the two precedent analyses on copular sentences. Heggie (1988), Moro(1977), and Mikkelsen (2005), among others, claim that the specificational copular sentence is an inverse predicational copular sentence, and that the predicational copular sentence and specificational copular sentence involve one and the same be. The other position, including Rothestein (2001), claims that the specificational copular sentence is not derived by inversion. Rothestein (2001) proposes that the specificational copular sentence is a subtype of equative sentences. The specificational copular sentence has the different structure from the predicational copular sentence.