One of the most distinctive aspects of Irish syntax is the rich subsystem it possesses
for the building of finite clauses with nonverbal argument-domains. One such clause-type,
copular clauses. has been much discussed in earlier work. This paper focuses on a distinct
subtype ‐ the class of lexically-headed nonverbal clauses ‐ which has received little attention
in existing work. Its goals are (i) to map the range of predication-types which are so expressible
(ii) to investigate what interpretive commonality unites this set of predication-types and
(iii) to consider some theoretical conclusions which then emerge with some clarity,
concerning the status of roots in syntactic representations and the question of whether
roots can impose selectional restrictions on syntactic objects in their local domain.