Introduction - The typology and semantics of locative predicates: posturals, positionals, and other beasts

1. The linguistic interest of positional verbs This special issue is devoted to a relatively neglected topic in linguistics, namely the verbal component of locative statements. English tends, of course, to use a simple copula in utterances like The cup is on the table, but many languages, perhaps as many as half of the world's languages, have a set of alternate verbs, or alternate verbal affixes, which contrast in this slot. Often these are classificatory verbs of sitting, standing and lying. For this reason, perhaps, Aristotle listed position among his basic (noncomposite) categories. © Walter de Gruyter 2007.