Detail #202: A Different Approach to Copulas

Consider a normal NP:

three red houses
the little man
those rocks in the valley
the two parts
a new idea

Consider also clauses such as 

the red houses are three / there are three of the red houses
the three houses are red
the man is small
those rocks are in the valley
the rocks in the valley are those
there are (the) two parts / the parts are two in numberthe idea is new

There's obviously a relation between these; however, doing something like conflating the two feels rather boring. As does just adding a verb to either end of the latter.

Adding a verb after it, with no other marking that distinguishes the complement from the NP obviously makes it unclear what particular adjective or determiner or whatever that is relevant?

So, we add a marker that tells us which particular type of thing the verb pertains to:

the three red houses QUANTIFIER_are: the read houses are three in number
the three red houses ADJ_are: the three houses are red
the three red houses DET_are: those are the three red houses
the three red houses NOUN_are: the three red (things) are houses

We could of course have some categories: several noun-markers (mass noun, identity wrt noun, type wrt noun), some classes of adjectives (by some semantic distinction). When several things of the same type are stacked, some ambiguity of course ensues. We could reduce the likelihood of such ambiguity by having, say, a few classes of adjectives (semantically delineated, I figure). Many adjectives might have synonyms in several classes, where the semantic difference also plays in, i.e. the synonyms differ in subtle ways by virtue of being in different classes. Agreement for the right adjective class then reduces the likelihood of ambiguity (since it's less likely that an adjective of the same type is present.) Stacked quantifiers might not be all that common, nor stacked determiners and such, but let's not assume they are entirely absent. The ambiguity, though, probably is not all that problematic.