What is it about?
In this work, I used data from the database Grambank to look at how languages do two things. These are how languages express subjects and how a language expresses 'to be'. Doing these two things in certain ways is supposed to indicate that a language is a certain type called an omnipredicative language. Via statistics, I found that omnipredicative languages do not seem to be very common. I also had some issues along the way, so I made some suggestions for future research looking at omnipredicative languages.
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Why is it important?
This paper tests a method that was created a few years ago, and finds that the method works as expected on different data. The method offers us a better way of double-checking what we think we know about how the languages of the world do different things.
Perspectives
This article is the first thing of mine to be published! So that is really exciting and satisfying. I wrote this over six months ago, and looking back at it now with everything all formatted and official is wild. Before the experience of doing this research and writing this paper, I think I had a much more straightforward idea of what research looked like. But, like everything in life, things have imperfections, have their messier bits when you look behind the curtain, and have a non-linear path. At the end of the day though, I'm proud of my first publication and to have the opportunity to create a research practice of my own!
Matthew Micyk
Universite Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A Grambank typology of omnipredicativity, Nota Bene, October 2025, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/nb.00037.mic.
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