Predication and equation in Hebrew (nonpseudocleft) copular sentences

This paper deals with a series of distributional and semantic contrasts between Hebrew copular sentences with two kinds of pronominal copulas: pronH and PronZ. I review three previous proposals regarding the underlying difference between the copulas in terms of the predication/equation relation they express (Heller 2002) the direction of agreement (Sichel 1997) and the presence or absence of a [human] constraint (Berman 1978), and show that the full range of facts can be explained based on the interaction of Sichels and Bermans proposals and the hypothesis that post-copular APs in pronZ sentences modify a null nominal expression. This latter hypothesis is motivated by applying Hellers claims about pseudoclefts to simple copular sentences as well.