Studies of copular forms are extremely relevant to issues in philosophy, psychology, and linguistics. Psychologists have recently argued that the most distinctive aspect of human language is its combinatorial nature (e.g., Gentner, 2003; Spelke, 2003). They argue that this linguistic component might be what separates human from animal cognition.…

The present article examines one property of bilingual speech--convergence--and strives towards explanatory depth by attending to the insights of the antecedent research in formal linguistics, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics. In particular, the paper adopts as a point of departure (and further substantiates) the argument that convergence…