Is there such a thing as “identity predication”? Further comments on Creissels et al. (2026)

In the position paper of their new work on “non-verbal predication” (Bertinetto et al. 2026), which I discussed in two earlier blogposts here and here), Creissels et al. distinguish two “functional types” of “nominal predication”: inclusion predication (§4.1) and identity predication (§4.2). Most of the examples throughout their paper are of the “inclusion” type, which seems to be much more commonly described in grammars (maybe because it is more frequent in discourse?). The contrast can be illustrated by (i)-(ii):

(i) “inclusion predication” (≈ classificational): Alex is a doctor.

(ii) “identity predication” (= equational): Alex is the doctor.

The two terms correspond largely with my terms classificational/equational (Haspelmath 2025), though I distinguish terminologically between attributional clauses (Alex is tall) and classificational clauses (Alex is a doctor). The reason is that I do not treat “adjectival predication” as a strategy, but as a functionally defined construction (called attributional clause; see the earlier discussion in this blogpost). As a cover term for classificational and attributional clauses, I use the term ascriptive, which is thus fully equivalent to “inclusion predication”.

But why do I use “equational” instead of “identity predication”? There are two reasons: (i) The term identificational has been widely used in a different sense, and (ii) I do not think that it is helpful to use “predication” in the broad sense in which Hengeveld (1992) used it. Equational constructions should probably not be described as “predicational”, unlike ascriptive (classificational and attributional) clauses and predlocative clauses. This is why I use the term nonverbal clause constructions in the title of my 2025 paper, rather than “nonverbal predication” (though that was the working title of the paper at the beginning, following Hengeveld’s usage).

There is a tradition of talking about nonverbal clauses that goes back to Higgins (1979) and is represented, among others, by Moro (1997), Mikkelsen (2011) and den Dikken & O’Neill (2017). In this (generative and formal-semantic) tradition, most authors use the terms exemplified below (taken from Mikkelsen 2011: 1806; based on Higgins 1979: 204–293).

The type “Cicero is Tully” (or “Dr. Jekyll is Mr. Hyde”) is special, as it is the only one that represents “a truly symmetrical situation” (as noted by Creissels et al. 2026: 30). It should not be called “equative” (because this term is best reserved for a kind of comparison construction, e.g. She is as eloquent as Cicero), but I have proposed a special term for it (tautotic, derived from Greek ταυτότης ‘identity’).

In addition, there is a distinction that is briefly mentioned by Creissels et al. (2026: 31), exemplified by the contrast in (iii)-(iv):

(iii) Paris is the capital of France.    (characterizational)

(iv) The capital of France is Paris.   (specificational)

The difference between these two is not well-known among typologists, but it is quite striking, and I think that it is useful to distinguish them with the terms characterizational vs. specificational. To describe the distinction between them, one needs the concepts of “value nominal” (e.g. Paris) and variable nominal (e.g. capital of France). Then one can say that a characterizational clause an equational clause in which the topic is a value nominal and the comment is a variable nominal, while in a specificational clause the topic is a variable nominal and the comment is a value nominal (Haspelmath 2025: §9).

The contrast was discussed by Hengeveld (1992: 82-83) and by Stassen (1997: 100-106), but it has not become well-known, despite its striking nature, and its importance in cleft constructions (which are based on specificational equational clauses).

Now what about the notion of “predication”? In the tradition going back to Higgins (1979), characterizational clauses are treated as a subtype of “predication”, while specificational clauses are said to be non-predicational. In formal semantics, “predication” apparently has a specific sense, but this does not necessarily correspond to the way linguists normally use “predication”.

Croft (2022: Chapter 10) distinguishes between predicational (or topic-comment), presentational and identificational information packaging functions. In my 2025 paper, I adopted this view, distinguishing between predicational and nonpredicational nonverbal clauses:

What is important in Croft’s view is that not only equational (“identificational”) clauses are non-predicational, but also existential and predpossessive clauses. Creissels (2019) introduced the notion of “inverse-locational predication” (which I discussed in an earlier blogpost), but he did not say in what way he used “predication”. Similarly, Creissels et al. (2026) do not say what they mean by “predication”, and they seem to adopt Hengeveld’s (1992) view according to which “predication” is a semantic level of the clause (below the proposition), so that every clause must express both a predication and a proposition. However, since the term “predicate” comes from Aristotle and was opposed to “subject” by him, and since “subject-predicate” was meant in the modern sense of “topic-comment”, it seems that Croft’s terminology is quite appropriate, too.

In existential clauses, there is a well-known problem of identifying the “subject” and the “predicate”, and this applies to some strategies for predpossessive clauses, too. In the Russian clause U nee mnogo deneg [at her much money] ‘She has a lot of money’, what is the subject and what is the predicate? According to Freeze (1992), the oblique possessor is the subject, and he even extends this view to sentences such as Na stole mnogo deneg [on table much money] ‘There is a lot of money on the table’ (i.e. ‘on the table’ is the subject). Thus, it seems a good idea to treat existential and predpossessive clauses as nonpredicational, along with equational clauses. This means that “identity statements” are not predicational, but this depends of course on a specific definition of “predication”.

Sadly, “predicate/predication” is one of the many basic terms of linguistics that are not used uniformly, but the new typological work by Creissels et al. brings these issues into sharp relief. Let’s see whether we will eventually have clarity how “predication” should be used.

References

Bertinetto, Pier Marco & Ciucci, Luca & Creissels, Denis (eds.). 2026. Non-verbal predication in the world’s languages: A typological survey (Volumes 1-2). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. (https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110730982-001/html)

Creissels, Denis. 2019. Inverse-locational predication in typological perspective. Italian Journal of Linguistics 31(2). 37–106.

Creissels, Denis & Bertinetto, Pier Marco & Ciucci, Luca. 2026. Non-verbal predication: An analytical framework. In Bertinetto, Pier Marco & Ciucci, Luca & Creissels, Denis (eds.), Non-verbal predication in the world’s languages: A typological survey (Volume 1), 1–56. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. (https://hal.science/hal-05282984v1)

Croft, William. 2022. Morphosyntax: Constructions of the world’s languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

den Dikken, Marcel & O’Neill, Teresa. 2017. Copular constructions in syntax. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.137)

Freeze, Ray. 1992. Existentials and other locatives. Language 553–595.

Haspelmath, Martin. 2025. Nonverbal clause constructions. Language and Linguistics Compass 19(2). e70007. (doi:10.1111/lnc3.70007)

Hengeveld, Kees. 1992. Non-verbal predication: Theory, typology, diachrony. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Higgins, F. R. 1979. The pseudo-cleft construction in English. New York: Garland.

Moro, Andrea. 1997. The raising of predicates: Predicative noun phrases and the theory of clause structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Martin Haspelmath (November 29, 2025). Is there such a thing as “identity predication”? Further comments on Creissels et al. (2026). Diversity Linguistics Comment. Retrieved December 14, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/158q0


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