Definition:
A sentence, usually constructed with a copula, in which a quality is attributed to someone or something.
Unlike an equational sentence ("Mary is the boss"), an ascriptive sentence ("Mary is happy") usually can't be reversed in any stylistically conventional manner. See also:
Examples and Observations:
- Colonel Edwards: Why is it so important that you want to contact the governments of our earth?
Eros: Because of death. Because all you of Earth are idiots!
(Plan 9 from Outer Space, 1959) - "You know Ronnie Corbett? He's brilliant! But he's not really small. They made him look small to fit on telly."
(Paul Whitehouse in The Fast Show, 1994) - "[A copula] serves only to express identity or class membership. The English copula is be, and this verb has two main functions. First, as the verb in an equational sentence, it expresses identity and functions rather like an equal sign in mathematics: The largest planet in our solar system is Jupiter. Such a sentence can be readily reversed: Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. Second, as the verb in an ascriptive sentence, it ascribes some property to its subject, or, in other words, it assigns its subject to membership in some class: Susie is clever; Susie is sleepy; Susie is a woman with a red car. Here certain properties are being ascribed to Susie (cleverness, sleepiness, having a red car), or equivalently, Susie is being assigned to the class of clever people, to the class of sleepy people, or to the class of car-owners. Such sentences become unnatural or worse when reversed: ??Clever is Susie; ??A woman with a red car is Susie."
(R.L. Trask, Language and Linguistics: The Key Concepts, 2nd ed. Routledge, 2007) - "The difference between equative and ascriptive sentences is clear enough if we compare the sentences 'John is the chairman' with 'John is intelligent': 'the chairman' is a nominal (NP) and 'intelligent' an adjective; and the nominal, but not the adjective, is permutable with the subject-NP. (The utterance Intelligent is John is of course acceptable; but it is stylistically restricted, and it is associated with a very particular intonation pattern . . ..) Adjectives cannot occur as equative complements (in sentences that have an NP-subject). It is the difference between the sentences 'John is the chairman' and 'John is a writer' that is both less obvious and (it must be admitted) more controversial; and this difference has been obscured in many treatments of English by classifying both kinds of complements as nominal."
(John Lyons, Semantics, Volume Two. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977)
