Non-verbal predicates in Oceanic languages

Oceanic languages, much like the rest of Austronesian, show a propensity to do without any copula when encoding their non-verbal predicates. Their typical profile is “omnipredicative”: most of their word classes (adjectives, nouns, pronouns, numerals, adverbs ...) can head a predicate directly, with no need to resort to verbal strategies. Many classes are even “tamophoric”, i.e. can inflect for Tense–Aspect–Mood. This overview of Oceanic languages builds around the system of Mwotlap (Vanuatu), a radical example of these grammatical tendencies. Overall, the Oceanic family reminds us that the properties [predicative] and [tamophoric] are not a privilege of verbs, but can be associated, in principle, with just any word class.