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{{Short description|Grammatical concept marking the notion of "is" or "to be"; sometimes implied and often a verb}}{{About|linguistic copulas|other uses|Copula (disambiguation)}}{{Cleanup lang|article|date=October 2020}} In
linguistics, a
copula ({{plural form}}:
copulas or
copulae;
abbreviated {{smallcaps|
cop}}) is a word or phrase that links the
subject of a
sentence to a
subject complement, such as the word
is in the sentence "The sky is blue" or the phrase
was not being in the sentence "It was not being co-operative." The word
copula derives from the
Latin noun for a "link" or "tie" that connects two different things.See
copula in the
Online Etymology Dictionary for attestation of the use of the term, "copula", since the 1640s.See the appendix to Moro 1997 and the references cited there for a short history of the copula.A copula is often a
verb or a verb-like word, though this is not universally the case.BOOK, Pustet, Regina, Copulas: Universals in the Categorization of the Lexicon,
weblink 12 June 2003, Oxford University Press, 978-0-19-155530-5, 54, Frajzyngier (1986) argues that copulas may also develop from prepositions, A verb that is a copula is sometimes called a
copulative or
copular verb. In English
primary education grammar courses, a copula is often called a
linking verb. In other languages, copulas show more resemblances to
pronouns, as in
Classical Chinese and
Guarani, or may take the form of
suffixes attached to a noun, as in
Korean,
Beja, and
Inuit languages.Most languages have one main copula (in English, the verb "to be"), although some (like
Spanish,
Portuguese and
Thai) have more than one, while others have
none. While the term
copula is generally used to refer to such principal verbs, it may also be used for a wider group of verbs with similar potential functions (like
become,
get,
feel and
seem in English); alternatively, these might be distinguished as "semi-copulas" or "pseudo-copulas".
Grammatical function
The principal use of a copula is to link the
subject of a
clause to a
subject complement. A copular verb is often considered to be part of the
predicate, the remainder being called a
predicative expression. A simple clause containing a copula is illustrated below:The book
is on the table.In that sentence, the
noun phrase the book is the subject, the verb
is serves as the copula, and the
prepositional phrase on the table is the predicative expression. The whole expression
is on the table may (in some theories of grammar) be called a predicate or a
verb phrase.The predicative expression accompanying the copula, also known as the
complement of the copula, may take any of several possible forms: it may be a noun or noun phrase, an
adjective or adjective phrase, a prepositional phrase (as above) or an adverb or another adverbial phrase expressing time or location. Examples are given below (with the copula in bold and the predicative expression in italics):{{Poem quote|Mary and John
are my friends.The sky
was blue.I
am taller than most people.The birds and the beasts
were there.}}The three components (subject, copula and predicative expression) do not necessarily appear in that order: their positioning depends on the rules for
word order applicable to the language in question. In English (an
SVO language), the ordering given above is the normal one, but certain variation is possible:
It is also possible, in certain circumstances, for one (or even two) of the three components to be absent:
- In null-subject (pro-drop) languages, the subject may be omitted, as it may from other types of sentence. In Italian, means âI am tiredâ, literally âam tiredâ.
- In non-finite clauses in languages like English, the subject is often absent, as in the participial phrase being tired or the infinitive phrase to be tired. The same applies to most imperative sentences like Be good!
- For cases in which no copula appears, see {{slink||Zero copula}} below.
- Any of the three components may be omitted as a result of various general types of ellipsis. In particular, in English, the predicative expression may be elided in a construction similar to verb phrase ellipsis, as in short sentences like I am; Are they? (where the predicative expression is understood from the previous context).
Inverse copular constructions, in which the positions of the predicative expression and the subject are reversed, are found in various languages.See Everaert et al. 2006. They have been the subject of much theoretical analysis, particularly in regard to the difficulty of maintaining, in the case of such sentences, the usual division into a subject
noun phrase and a predicate
verb phrase.Another issue is
verb agreement when both subject and predicative expression are noun phrases (and differ in number or person): in English, the copula typically agrees with the syntactical subject even if it is not logically (i.e.
semantically) the subject, as in
the cause of the riot is (not
are)
these pictures of the wall. Compare Italian ; notice the use of the plural to agree with plural "these photos" rather than with singular "the cause". In instances where an English syntactical subject comprises a prepositional object that is pluralized, however, the prepositional object agrees with the predicative expression, e.g. "What kind
of birds are those?"The definition and scope of the concept of a copula is not necessarily precise in any language. As noted above, though the concept of the copula in English is most strongly associated with the verb
to be, there are many other verbs that can be used in a copular sense as well.BOOK, English Grammar: A function-based introduction, 1, Givón, T., John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1993,
weblink 103â104, 9027273898, WEB, What are copular verbs?,
weblink November 15, 2010, October 31, 2017,
weblink November 7, 2017, dead,
- The boy became a man.
- The girl grew more excited as the holiday preparations intensified.
- The dog felt tired from the activity.
And more tenuously
- The milk turned sour.
- The food smells good.
- You seem upset.
Other functions
A copular verb may also have other uses supplementary to or distinct from its uses as a copula. Some co-occurrences are common.
Auxiliary verb
The English verb
(wikt:be#Verb|to be) is also used as an
auxiliary verb, especially for expressing
passive voice (together with the
past participle) or expressing
progressive aspect (together with the
present participle):{{Poem quote|The man
was killed. (passive)It
is raining. (progressive)}}Other languages' copulas have additional uses as auxiliaries. For example, French can be used to express passive voice similarly to English
be; both French and German are used to express the
perfect forms of certain verbs (formerly English
be was also):{{Poem quote| French for 'I have arrived,' literally 'I am arrived.'}}The auxiliary functions of these verbs derived from their copular function, and could be interpreted as special cases of the copular function (with the verbal forms it precedes being considered adjectival).Another auxiliary usage in English is to denote an obligatory action or expected occurrence: "I am to serve you". "The manager is to resign". This can be put also into past tense: "We were to leave at 9". For forms like "if I was/were to come", see
English conditional sentences. (By certain criteria, the English copula
be may always be considered an auxiliary verb; see
Diagnostics for identifying auxiliary verbs in English.)
Existential verb
The English
to be and its equivalents in certain other languages also have a non-copular use as an existential verb, meaning "to exist". This use is illustrated in the following sentences:
I want only to be, and that is enough;
I think therefore I am;
To be or not to be, that is the question. In these cases, the verb itself expresses a predicate (that of
existence), rather than linking to a predicative expression as it does when used as a copula. In
ontology it is sometimes suggested that the "is" of existence is reducible to the "is" of property attribution or class membership; to be,
Aristotle held, is to be
something. However,
Abelard in his
Dialectica made a
reductio ad absurdum argument against the idea that the copula can express existence.Kneale â Kneale 1962 and Moro 1997Similar examples can be found in many other languages; for example, the French and Latin equivalents of
I think therefore I am are and , where and are the equivalents of English "am", normally used as copulas. However, other languages prefer a different verb for existential use, as in the Spanish version (where the verb "to exist" is used rather than the copula or âto beâ).Another type of existential usage is in clauses of the
there is... or
there are... type. Languages differ in the way they express such meanings; some of them use the copular verb, possibly with an
expletive pronoun like the English
there, while other languages use different verbs and constructions, like the French (which uses parts of the verb âto have,â not the copula) or the Swedish (the passive voice of the verb for "to find"). For details, see
existential clause.Relying on a unified theory of copular sentences, it has been proposed that the English
there-sentences are subtypes of
inverse copular constructions.See Moro 1997, and "existential sentences and expletive
there" in Everaert et al. 2006, for a detailed discussion of this issue and a historical survey of the major proposals.
Meanings
Predicates formed using a copula may express identity: that the two noun phrases (subject and complement) have the same
referent or express an identical concept:{{Poem quote|I want only
to be myself.The Morning Star
is the Evening Star.}}They may also express membership of a class or a
subset relationship:{{Poem quote|She
was a nurse.Cats
are carnivorous mammals.}}Similarly they may express some property, relation or position, permanent or temporary:{{Poem quote|The trees
are green.I
am your boss.The hen
is next to the cockerel.The children
are confused.}}
Essence versus state
Some languages use different copulas, or different syntax, to denote a permanent, essential characteristic of something versus a temporary state. For examples, see the sections on the
Romance languages,
Slavic languages and
Irish.
Forms
In many languages the principal copula is a
verb, like English
(to) be, German ,
Mixtec ,BOOK, Regina Pustet, Copulas: Universals in the Categorization of the Lexicon,
weblink 12 June 2003, OUP Oxford, 978-0-19-155530-5, 47,
Touareg emous, etc. It may inflect for
grammatical categories like
tense,
aspect and
mood, like other verbs in the language. Being a very commonly used verb, it is likely that the copula has
irregular inflected forms; in English, the verb
be has a number of highly irregular (
suppletive) forms and has more different inflected forms than any other English verb (
am,
is,
are,
was,
were, etc.; see
English verbs for details).Other copulas show more resemblances to
pronouns. That is the case for
Classical Chinese and
Guarani, for instance. In highly
synthetic languages, copulas are often
suffixes, attached to a noun, but they may still behave otherwise like ordinary verbs: in
Inuit languages.In some other languages, like
Beja and
Ket, the copula takes the form of suffixes that attach to a noun but are distinct from the
person agreement markers used on
predicative verbs.BOOK, Stassen, Leon, 1997, Intransitive Predication, Oxford studies in typology and linguistic theory, Oxford University Press, 39, 978-0-19-925893-2, This phenomenon is known as
nonverbal person agreement (or
nonverbal subject agreement), and the relevant markers are always established as deriving from
cliticized independent pronouns.
Zero copula
In some languages, copula omission occurs within a particular grammatical context. For example, speakers of
Russian,
Indonesian,
Turkish,
Hungarian,
Arabic,
Hebrew,
Geʽez and
Quechuan languages consistently drop the copula in present tense: Russian: , {{transliteration|ru|ya chelovek}} âI (am a) human;â Indonesian: âI (am) a human;â Turkish: âs/he (is a) human;â Hungarian: âs/he (is) a human;â Arabic: Ø£Ùا Ø¥ÙساÙ, {{transliteration|ar|ʾana ʾinsÄn}} âI (am a) human;â Hebrew: ×× × ×××,
Êani Êadam "I (am a) human;" Geʽez: á á á¥á¥á²/á¥á¥á² á á
Êana bÉÊÉsi /
bÉÊÉsi Êana "I (am a) man" / "(a) man I (am)"; Southern Quechua:
payqa runam "s/he (is) a human." The usage is known generically as the zero copula. In other tenses (sometimes in forms other than third person singular), the copula usually reappears.Some languages drop the copula in poetic or
aphorismic contexts. Examples in English include
- The more, the better.
- Out of many, one.
- True that.
Such poetic copula dropping is more pronounced in some languages other than English, like the
Romance languages.In informal speech of English, the copula may also be dropped in general sentences, as in "She a nurse." It is a feature of
African-American Vernacular English, but is also used by a variety of other English speakers. An example is the sentence "I saw twelve men, each a soldier."BOOK, Bender, Emily, 2001, Syntactic Variation and Linguistic Competence: The Case of AAVE Copula Absence, Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University,
weblinkweblink" title="ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009
weblink">weblink 2022-10-09, live, {{page needed|date=January 2015}}
Examples in specific languages
In Ancient Greek, when an adjective precedes a noun with an article, the copula is understood: , "the house is large", can be written , "large the house (is)."{{Citation needed|date=October 2015}}In Quechua (
Southern Quechua used for the examples), zero copula is restricted to present tense in third person singular (
kan):
Payqa runam â "(s)he is a human;" but:
(paykuna) runakunam kanku "(they) are human."{{Citation needed|reason=English, Hungarian, and Irish are treated at 'Zero copula'. There are no references for Greek or Quechua here or on that page.|date=February 2014}}In
MÄori, the zero copula can be used in
predicative expressions and with continuous verbs (many of which take a copulative verb in many Indo-European languages) â
He nui te whare, literally "a big the house", "the house (is) big;"
I te tÄpu te pukapuka, literally "at (past
locative particle) the table the book", "the book (was) on the table;"
NÅ Ingarangi ia, literally "from England (s)he", "(s)he (is) from England",
Kei te kai au, literally "at the (act of) eating I", "I (am) eating."WEB,
weblink Language Maori, WALS Online, 2014-02-07,
weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20140306092639
weblink">weblink 2014-03-06, dead, {{Citation | last = Moorfield | first = John | year = 2004 | title = Te KÄkano | publisher = University of Waikato}}Alternatively, in many cases, the particle
ko can be used as a copulative (though not all instances of
ko are used as thus, like all other Maori particles,
ko has multiple purposes):
Ko nui te whare "The house is big;"
Ko te pukapuka kei te tÄpu "It is the book (that is) on the table;"
Ko au kei te kai "It is me eating."However, when expressing identity or class membership,
ko must be used:
Ko tÄnei tÄku pukapuka "This is my book;"
Ko Åtautahi he tÄone i Te Waipounamu "Christchurch is a city in the South Island (of New Zealand);"
Ko koe tÅku hoa "You are my friend."When expressing identity,
ko can be placed on either object in the clause without changing the meaning (
ko tÄnei tÄku pukapuka is the same as
ko tÄku pukapuka tÄnei) but not on both (
ko tÄnei ko tÄku pukapuka would be equivalent to saying "it is this, it is my book" in English).{{Citation | last = Barlow | first = D. Cleve | year = 1981 | title = The Meaning of Ko in New Zealand Maori | journal = Pacific Studies | volume = 4 | pages = 124â141 | url =
weblink | access-date = February 7, 2014 | archive-url =
weblink | archive-date = February 21, 2014 | url-status = dead }}In Hungarian, zero copula is restricted to present tense in third person singular and plural:
Å ember/
Åk emberek â "s/he is a human"/"they are humans;" but:
(én) ember vagyok "I am a human",
(te) ember vagy "you are a human",
mi emberek vagyunk "we are humans",
(ti) emberek vagytok "you (all) are humans." The copula also reappears for stating locations:
az emberek a házban vannak, "the people are in the house", and for stating time:
hat óra van, "it is six o'clock." However, the copula may be omitted in colloquial language:
hat óra (van), "it is six o'clock."Hungarian uses copula
lenni for expressing location:
Itt van Róbert "Bob is here", but it is omitted in the third person present tense for attribution or identity statements:
Róbert öreg "Bob is old;"
Åk éhesek "They are hungry;"
Kati nyelvtudós "Cathy is a linguist" (but
Róbert öreg volt "Bob was old",
éhesek voltak "They were hungry",
Kati nyelvtudós volt "Cathy was a linguist").In Turkish, both the third person singular and the third person plural copulas are omittable.
Ali burada and
Ali buradadır both mean "Ali is here", and Onlar aç and Onlar açlar both mean "They are hungry." Both of the sentences are acceptable and grammatically correct, but sentences with the copula are more formal.The Turkish first person singular copula suffix is omitted when introducing oneself.
Bora ben (I am Bora) is grammatically correct, but "Bora ben
im" (same sentence with the copula) is not for an introduction (but is grammatically correct in other cases).Further restrictions may apply before omission is permitted. For example, in the
Irish language,
is, the present tense of the copula, may be omitted when the
predicate is a noun.
Ba, the past/conditional, cannot be deleted. If the present copula is omitted, the pronoun (e.g.,
é, Ã, iad) preceding the noun is omitted as well.
Copula-like words
Sometimes, the term
copula is taken to include not only a language's equivalent(s) to the verb
be but also other verbs or forms that serve to link a subject to a predicative expression (while adding
semantic content of their own). For example, English verbs like
become,
get,
feel,
look,
taste,
smell, and
seem can have this function, as in the following sentences (the predicative expression, the complement of the verb, is in italics):{{Poem quote|She became
a student.They look
tired.The milk tastes
bad.That bread smells
good.I feel
bad that she can't come with us.London stands (is)
on the river Thames.How is Mary? ; She seems (is)
well (fine).}}(This usage should be distinguished from the use of some of these verbs as "action" verbs, as in
They look at the wall, in which
look denotes an action and cannot be replaced by the basic copula
are.)Some verbs have rarer, secondary uses as copular verbs, like the verb
fall in sentences like
The zebra fell victim to the lion.These extra copulas are sometimes called "semi-copulas" or "pseudo-copulas."BOOK, C.S., Butler, Structure and Function: A Guide to the Three Major Structural-Functional Theories, Studies in Language Companion Series, John Benjamins Publishing, 2003, 63, 425â6, 10.1075/slcs.63, 9789027296535, For a list of common verbs of this type in English, see
List of English copulae.
In particular languages
Indo-European
In
Indo-European languages, the words meaning
to be are sometimes similar to each other. Due to the high frequency of their use, their inflection retains a considerable degree of similarity in some cases. Thus, for example, the English form
is is a
cognate of German
ist, Latin
est, Persian
ast and Russian
jest', even though the Germanic, Italic, Iranian and Slavic language groups split at least 3000 years ago. The origins of the copulas of most Indo-European languages can be traced back to four
Proto-Indo-European stems:
*es- (
*h1es-),
*sta- (
*steh2-),
*wes- and
*bhu- (
*bÊ°uH-).
English
The English copular verb
be has eight basic forms (
be,
am,
is,
are,
being,
was,
were,
been) and five negative forms (
ain't (in some dialects),
isn't,
aren't,
wasn't,
weren't).BOOK, Huddleston, Rodney, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Pullum, Geoffrey K.,
Cambridge University Press, 2002, Cambridge, 75, 91, 113â114, No other English verb has more than five forms. Additional archaic forms include
art,
wast,
wert, and occasionally
beest (as a
subjunctive). For more details see
English verbs. For the etymology of the various forms, see
Indo-European copula.The main uses of the copula in English are described in the above sections. The possibility of copula omission is mentioned under {{slink||Zero copula}}.A particular construction found in English (particularly in speech) is the use of
two successive copulas when only one appears necessary, as in
My point is, is that....CONFERENCE,
weblink "The thing is, is" Is No Mere Disfluency, Coppock, Elizabeth, Brenier, Jason, Staum, Laura, Michaelis, Laura, February 10, 2006, Sheridan Books, Proceedings of the Thirty-Second Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 85â96, Berkeley, California, 32nd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, July 16, 2018,
weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20180717041608
weblink">weblink July 17, 2018, dead, The acceptability of this construction is a
disputed matter in English prescriptive grammar.The simple English copula "be" may on occasion be substituted by other verbs with near identical meanings.
Persian
In Persian, the verb
to be can take the form of either
ast (cognate to English
is) or
budan (cognate to
be).
{| border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1"
|
| Aseman abi ast.|آسÙ
Ø§Ù Ø¢Ø¨Û Ø§Ø³Øª| the sky is blue
|
| Aseman abi khahad bood.|آسÙ
Ø§Ù Ø¢Ø¨Û Ø®ÙاÙد بÙد| the sky will be blue
|
| Aseman abi bood.|آسÙ
Ø§Ù Ø¢Ø¨Û Ø¨Ùد| the sky was blue
Hindustani
In Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu), the copula हà¥à¤¨à¤¾ ɦonÉ ÛÙÙا can be put into four grammatical aspects (simple, habitual, perfective, and progressive) and each of those four aspects can be put into five grammatical moods (indicative, presumptive, subjunctive, contrafactual, and imperative).JOURNAL, VAN OLPHEN, HERMAN, Aspect, Tense, and Mood in the Hindi Verb, 1975,weblink Indo-Iranian Journal, 16, 4, 284â301, 10.1163/000000075791615397, 24651488, 161530848, 0019-7246, Some example sentences using the simple aspect are shown below:{| border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1"! !! align="right" | Hindi!Urdu! align="left" | Transliteration !! align="left" | English|
|Simple Indicative Present| à¤à¤¸à¤®à¤¾à¤¨ नà¥à¤²à¤¾ हà¥à¥¤hai.| the sky is blue |
|
|Simple Indicative Perfect| à¤à¤¸à¤®à¤¾à¤¨ नà¥à¤²à¤¾ हà¥à¤à¥¤huÄ.|the sky became blue |
|
|Simple Indicative Imperfect| à¤à¤¸à¤®à¤¾à¤¨ नà¥à¤²à¤¾ था।thÄ.| the sky was blue |
|
|Simple Indicative Future| à¤à¤¸à¤®à¤¾à¤¨ नà¥à¤²à¤¾ हà¥à¤à¤à¤¾à¥¤hoegÄ.| the sky will be blue |
|
|Simple Subjunctive Present| à¤à¤¸à¤®à¤¾à¤¨ नà¥à¤²à¤¾ हà¥à¥¤ho.|the sky be blue |
|
|Simple Subjunctive Future| à¤à¤¸à¤®à¤¾à¤¨ नà¥à¤²à¤¾ हà¥à¤à¥¤hoe.|the sky becomes blue |
|
|Simple Presumptive Present| à¤à¤¸à¤®à¤¾à¤¨ नà¥à¤²à¤¾ हà¥à¤à¤¾à¥¤hogÄ.|the sky might be blue |
|
|Simple Contrafactual Past| à¤à¤¸à¤®à¤¾à¤¨ नà¥à¤²à¤¾ हà¥à¤¤à¤¾à¥¤hotÄ.|the sky would have been blue |
Besides the verb हà¥à¤¨à¤¾ honÄ }} (to be), there are three other verbs which can also be used as the copula, they are रहना rêhnÄ }} (to stay), à¤à¤¾à¤¨à¤¾ jÄnÄ }} (to go), and à¤à¤¨à¤¾ ÄnÄ }} (to come).BOOK, Shapiro, Michael C., A Primer of Modern Standard Hindi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1989, 81-208-0475-9, New Delhi, 216â246, The following table shows the conjugations of the copula हà¥à¤¨à¤¾ honÄ }} in the five grammatical moods in the simple aspect. The transliteration scheme used is ISO 15919.{| class="wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1"'''Hindustani Copula {{Nobold | |
! rowspan="2" |Mood! rowspan="2" |Tense! rowspan="2" |Gender! colspan="4" |Pronouns |
! align="right" | {{tooltip|maÍ i|I}}! align="left" | {{tooltip|tÅ«|you (intimate)}}!{{tooltip|tum|you (familiar)}}!{{tooltip|Äp|you (formal)}}, {{tooltip|ham|we}} |
! rowspan="7" |Indicative! Present!â âhÅ«Ì|"I am"}} | hai|"you (intimate) are"; "he/she/it is"}} | ho|"you (familiar) are"}} | haÍ i|"you (formal) are"; "they are"; "we are"}} | |
! rowspan="2" | Perfect!â {{tooltip | huÄ>"became" (masc. sing.)}} | {{tooltip | hue>"became" (masc. plu.)}} | |
!â {{tooltip | huÄ«>"became" (fem. sing.)}} | huÄ«Ì|"became" (fem. plu.)}} | |
! rowspan="2" | Imperfect!â {{tooltip | thÄ>"was/were" (masc. sing.)}} | {{tooltip | the>"was/were" (masc. plu.)}} | |
!â {{tooltip | thÄ«>"was/were" (fem. sing.)}} | thÄ«Ì|"was/were" (fem. plu.)}} | |
! rowspan="2" |Future!â|hoÅ«ÌgÄ|hoegÄ|hooge|hoẽge |
!â|hoÅ«ÌgÄ«|hoegÄ«|hoogÄ«|hoẽgÄ« |
! rowspan="2" |Presumptive! rowspan="2" |All!â|hÅ«ÌgÄ|hogÄ|hoge|hõge |
!â|hÅ«ÌgÄ«|hogÄ«|hogÄ«|hõgÄ« |
! rowspan="2" |Subjunctive!Present!â âhÅ«Ì|"[that] I be"}} | {{tooltip | ho>"[that] you (intimate/familiar) be"}} | hõ|"[that] we/they/you (formal) be"}} | |
!Future!â âhoÅ«Ì|"[that] I become"}} | hoe|"[that] you (intimate)/she/he/it become"}} | hoo|"[that] you (familiar) become"}} | hoẽ|"[that] we/they/you (formal) become"}} | |
! rowspan="2" |Contrafactual! rowspan="2" |Past!â {{tooltip | hotÄ>"would have been", "had [you] been" (masc. sing.)}} | {{tooltip | hote>"would have been", "had [you] been" (masc. plu.)}} | |
!â {{tooltip | hotÄ«>"would have been", "had [you] been" (fem. sing.)}} | hotÄ«Ì|"would have been", "had [you] been" (fem. plu.)}} | |
! rowspan="2" |Imperative!Present!â â|âho|"beÇ"}} | hoo|"beÇ"}} | hoiye|"beÇ"}} | |
!Future!â â|âhoiyo|"beÇ (later)"}} | honÄ|"beÇ (later)"}} | hoiyegÄ|"beÇ (later)"}} | |
Note: the third person singular and plural conjugations are respectivelythe same as the second person intimate and formal conjugations. |
Romance Copulas in the Romance languages usually consist of two different verbs that can be translated as "to be", the main one from the Latin esse (via Vulgar Latin essere; esse deriving from *es-), often referenced as sum (another of the Latin verb's principal parts) and a secondary one from stare (from *sta-), often referenced as sto. The resulting distinction in the modern forms is found in all the Iberian Romance languages, and to a lesser extent Italian, but not in French or Romanian. The difference is that the first usually refers to essential characteristics, while the second refers to states and situations, e.g., "Bob is old" versus "Bob is well." A similar division is found in the non-Romance Basque language (viz. egon and izan). (The English words just used, "essential" and "state", are also cognate with the Latin infinitives esse and stare. The word "stay" also comes from Latin stare, through Middle French estai, stem of Old French ester.) In Spanish and Portuguese, the high degree of verbal inflection, plus the existence of two copulas (ser and estar), means that there are 105 (Spanish) and 110 (Portuguese)WEB,weblink Conjugação de verbos regulares e irregulares, Conjuga-me, 2007-09-06, 2014-02-07, separate forms to express the copula, compared to eight in English and one in Chinese.{|class="wikitable"|
! rowspan=2 | Copula! colspan=4 | Language |
! Italian! Spanish! Portuguese! English |
align=left! align=left | Sum-derivedBob è vecchio.> | Bob es viejo.> | Bob é velho.>| "Bob is old." | |
align=left! align=left | Sto-derivedBob sta bene.> | Bob está bien.> | Bob está bem >| "Bob is well." | In some cases, the verb itself changes the meaning of the adjective/sentence. The following examples are from Portuguese:{|class="wikitable"|
! rowspan=2 | Copula! colspan="3" | Example 1! colspan="3" | Example 2 |
! Portuguese!Spanish! English! Portuguese!Spanish! English |
align=left! align=left | Sum-derived| Bob é esquisito.Bob es extraño.> | | Bob é parvo. | Bob es idiota.>| "Bob is foolish." | |
align=left! align=left | Sto-derived| Bob está esquisito.Bob está extraño.> | | Bob está parvo. | Bob está idiota.>| "Bob is acting/being silly." |
Slavic Some Slavic languages make a distinction between essence and state (similar to that discussed in the above section on the Romance languages), by putting a predicative expression denoting a state into the instrumental case, and essential characteristics are in the nominative. This can apply with other copula verbs as well: the verbs for "become" are normally used with the instrumental case.As noted above under {{slink||Zero copula}}, Russian and other North Slavic languages generally or often omit the copula in the present tense. Irish In Irish and Scottish Gaelic, there are two copulas, and the syntax is also changed when one is distinguishing between states or situations and essential characteristics.Describing the subject's state or situation typically uses the normal VSO ordering with the verb bÃ. The copula is is used to state essential characteristics or equivalences.
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| align=right valign=top | | |
fear é Liam.> | |(Lit., "Is man Liam.") | |
leabhar é sin.> | |(Lit., "Is book it that.") | The word is is the copula (rhymes with the English word "miss").The pronoun used with the copula is different from the normal pronoun. For a masculine singular noun, é is used (for "he" or "it"), as opposed to the normal pronoun sé; for a feminine singular noun, à is used (for "she" or "it"), as opposed to normal pronoun sÃ; for plural nouns, iad is used (for "they" or "those"), as opposed to the normal pronoun siad.BOOK, Dillon, Myles, Myles Dillon, à CróinÃn, Donncha, Donncha à CróinÃn, 1961, Teach Yourself Irish,weblink London, English Universities Press, 52, To describe being in a state, condition, place, or act, the verb "to be" is used: Tá mé ag rith. "I am running."WEB,weblink Foclóir GaeilgeâBéarla (à Dónaill): rith, www.teanglann.ie, Arabic dialects North Levantine Arabic The North Levantine Arabic dialect, spoken in Syria and Lebanon, has a negative copula formed by {{wikt-lang|apc|Ù
ا}} {{transliteration|apc|mÄ / ma}} and a suffixed pronoun.BOOK, Brustad, Kristen, Zuniga, Emilie, 6 March 2019, Huehnergard, John, John Huehnergard, Pat-El, Naâama, The Semitic languages, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, London & New York, 424â5, Chapter 16: Levantine Arabic, 978-0-429-02556-3, 2nd, 10.4324/9780429025563, 166512720, {| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"|
! colspan="4" | Negative copula in Levantine |
! colspan="2" |! Singular! Plural |
! colspan="2" | 1st person (m/f)apc | apc|mÄni}} | apc | apc|mÄna}} | |
! rowspan="2" | 2nd person! mapc | apc|mÄnak}} | {{wikt-lang | Ù
اÙÙÙÙ}} {{transliteration | mÄnkon}} | |
! fapc | apc|mÄnek}} | |
! rowspan="2" | 3rd person! mapc | apc|mÄno}} | {{wikt-lang | Ù
اÙÙÙÙ}} {{transliteration | mÄnon}} | Bantu languages Chichewa In Chichewa, a Bantu language spoken mainly in Malawi, a very similar distinction exists between permanent and temporary states as in Spanish and Portuguese, but only in the present tense. For a permanent state, in the 3rd person, the copula used in the present tense is ndi (negative sÃ):Maxson, Nathaniel (2011). Chicheŵa for English Speakers: A New and Simplified Approach. Assemblies of God Literature Press, Malawi, pp. 107, 108, 110.*Stevick, Earl et al. (1965). weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20160307012900weblink">Chinyanja Basic Course. Foreign Service Institute, Washington, D.C., pp. 157, 160â65.
iyé ndi mphunzitsi "he is a teacher"
iyé sà mphunzitsi "he is not a teacher"
For the 1st and 2nd persons the particle ndi is combined with pronouns, e.g. ine "I":
ine ndine mphunzitsi "I am a teacher"
iwe ndiwe mphunzitsi "you (singular) are a teacher"
ine sÃndine mphunzitsi "I am not a teacher"
For temporary states and location, the copula is the appropriate form of the defective verb -li:
iyé ali bwino "he is well"
iyé sáli bwino "he is not well"
iyé ali ku nyumbá "he is in the house"
For the 1st and 2nd persons the person is shown, as normally with Chichewa verbs, by the appropriate pronominal prefix:
ine ndili bwino "I am well"
iwe uli bwino "you (sg.) are well"
kunyumbá kuli bwino "at home (everything) is fine"
In the past tenses, -li is used for both types of copula:
iyé analà bwino "he was well (this morning)"
iyé ánaalà mphunzitsi "he was a teacher (at that time)"
In the future, subjunctive, or conditional tenses, a form of the verb khala ("sit/dwell") is used as a copula:
máwa ákhala bwino "he'll be fine tomorrow"
Muylaq' Aymaran Uniquely, the existence of the copulative verbalizer suffix in the Southern Peruvian Aymaran language variety, Muylaq' Aymara, is evident only in the surfacing of a vowel that would otherwise have been deleted because of the presence of a following suffix, lexically prespecified to suppress it. As the copulative verbalizer has no independent phonetic structure, it is represented by the Greek letter Ê in the examples used in this entry.Accordingly, unlike in most other Aymaran variants, whose copulative verbalizer is expressed with a vowel-lengthening component, -:, the presence of the copulative verbalizer in Muylaq' Aymara is often not apparent on the surface at all and is analyzed as existing only meta-linguistically. However, in a verb phrase like "It is old", the noun thantha meaning "old" does not require the copulative verbalizer, thantha-wa "It is old."It is now pertinent to make some observations about the distribution of the copulative verbalizer. The best place to start is with words in which its presence or absence is obvious. When the vowel-suppressing first person simple tense suffix attaches to a verb, the vowel of the immediately preceding suffix is suppressed (in the examples in this subsection, the subscript "c" appears prior to vowel-suppressing suffixes in the interlinear gloss to better distinguish instances of deletion that arise from the presence of a lexically pre-specified suffix from those that arise from other (e.g. phonotactic) motivations). Consider the verb sara- which is inflected for the first person simple tense and so, predictably, loses its final root vowel: sar(a)-ct-wa "I go."However, prior to the suffixation of the first person simple suffix -ct to the same root nominalized with the agentive nominalizer -iri, the word must be verbalized. The fact that the final vowel of -iri below is not suppressed indicates the presence of an intervening segment, the copulative verbalizer: sar(a)-iri-Ê-t-wa "I usually go."It is worthwhile to compare of the copulative verbalizer in Muylaq' Aymara as compared to La Paz Aymara, a variant which represents this suffix with vowel lengthening. Consider the near-identical sentences below, both translations of "I have a small house" in which the nominal root uta-ni "house-attributive" is verbalized with the copulative verbalizer, but the correspondence between the copulative verbalizer in these two variants is not always a strict one-to-one relation.BOOK, Coler, Matt, 2015, A Grammar of Muylaq' Aymara: Aymara as spoken in Southern Peru, Brill's Studies in the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, Brill, 472â476, 978-9-00-428380-0,
{| border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1"
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| La Paz Aymara:|ma: jisk'a uta-ni-:-ct(a)-wa |
| Muylaq' Aymara:|ma isk'a uta-ni-Ê-ct-wa
Georgian As in English, the verb "to be" (qopna) is irregular in Georgian (a Kartvelian language); different verb roots are employed in different tenses. The roots -ar-, -kn-, -qav-, and -qop- (past participle) are used in the present tense, future tense, past tense and the perfective tenses respectively. Examples:
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| Masc'avlebeli var.| "I am a teacher." |
| Masc'avlebeli viknebi.| "I will be a teacher." |
| Masc'avlebeli viqavi.| "I was a teacher." |
| Masc'avlebeli vqopilvar.| "I have been a teacher." |
| Masc'avlebeli vqopiliqavi.| "I had been a teacher." In the last two examples (perfective and pluperfect), two roots are used in one verb compound. In the perfective tense, the root qop (which is the expected root for the perfective tense) is followed by the root ar, which is the root for the present tense. In the pluperfective tense, again, the root qop is followed by the past tense root qav. This formation is very similar to German (an Indo-European language), where the perfect and the pluperfect are expressed in the following way:
{| border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1"
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| Ich bin Lehrer gewesen.| "I have been a teacher", literally "I am teacher been." |
| Ich war Lehrer gewesen.| "I had been a teacher", literally "I was teacher been." Here, gewesen is the past participle of sein ("to be") in German. In both examples, as in Georgian, this participle is used together with the present and the past forms of the verb in order to conjugate for the perfect and the pluperfect aspects. Haitian Creole Haitian Creole, a French-based creole language, has three forms of the copula: , , and the zero copula, no word at all (the position of which will be indicated with Ã, just for purposes of illustration).Although no textual record exists of Haitian-Creole at its earliest stages of development from French, is derived from French {{IPA-fr|se|}} (written ), which is the normal French contraction of {{IPA-fr|sÉ|}} (that, written ) and the copula {{IPA-fr|e|}} (is, written ) (a form of the verb ).The derivation of is less obvious; but we can assume that the French source was {{IPA-fr|ile|}} ("he/it is", written ), which, in rapidly spoken French, is very commonly pronounced as {{IPA-fr|je|}} (typically written ).The use of a zero copula is unknown in French, and it is thought to be an innovation from the early days when Haitian-Creole was first developing as a Romance-based pidgin. Latin also sometimes used a zero copula.Which of /à is used in any given copula clause depends on complex syntactic factors that we can superficially summarize in the following four rules:1. Use à (i.e., no word at all) in declarative sentences where the complement is an adjective phrase, prepositional phrase, or adverb phrase:{{interlinear|lang=ht|number=1a)|Li te à an Ayiti.|she PAST COP in Haiti.| "She was in Haiti."}}{{interlinear|lang=ht|number=1b)|Liv-la à jon.|book-the COP yellow.| "The book is yellow."}}{{interlinear|lang=ht|number=1c)| Timoun-yo à lakay.| Kids-the COP home.| "The kids are [at] home."}}2. Use when the complement is a noun phrase. But, whereas other verbs come after any tense/mood/aspect particles (like to mark negation, or to explicitly mark past tense, or to mark progressive aspect), comes before any such particles:{{interlinear|lang=ht|number=2a)|Chal se ekriven.|Charles is writer.|"Charles is a writer."}}{{interlinear|lang=ht|number=2b)| Chal, ki se ekriven, pa vini.| Charles, who is writer, not come. }3. Use where French and English have a dummy "it" subject:{{interlinear|lang=ht|number=3a)|glossing2=no|lang2=fr| Se mwen!| C'est moi!| "It's me!" | }{{interlinear|lang=ht|number=3b)|glossing2=no|lang2=fr| Se pa fasil.| C'est pas facile.| "It's not easy" }4. Finally, use the other copula form in situations where the sentence's syntax leaves the copula at the end of a phrase:{{interlinear|lang=ht|number=4a)| Kijan ou ye?| how 2SG be?| "How you are?"}}{{interlinear|lang=ht|number=4b)| Pou kimoun liv-la te ye?| Of who book-the PAST be?| "Whose book was it?"}}{{interlinear|lang=ht|number=4c)| M pa konnen kimoun li ye.| I not know who he is.| "I don't know who he is."}}{{interlinear|lang=ht|number=4d)|lang2=fr|glossing2=no| Se yon ekriven Chal ye.| C'est un écrivain Charles est.| Be a writer Charles be.| "Charles is a writer!"}}The above is, however, only a simplified analysis.Howe 1990. Source for most of the Haitian data in this article; for more details on syntactic conditions as well as Haitian-specific copula constructions, like se kouri m ap kouri (It's run I progressive run; "I'm really running!"), see the grammar sketch in this publication.Valdman & Rosemond 1988. Japanese (File:Ja da ya.png|thumb|Japanese copulae in the mid 20th century)The Japanese copula (most often translated into English as an inflected form of "to be") is unique among verbs in Japanese. It is highly irregular, and in several ways behaves in ways other verbs do not; such as requiring a separate relativised form in some circumstances, and acting simply as a marker of formality/politeness with no predication force in some circumstances. In the most basic case, it behaves like a normal verb with irregular forms, which (like most copulas crosslinguistically) takes a non-case-marked complement instead of an object.
{| border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1"
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| ja | | | (lit., I TOPIC student COPULA) | |
| ja | | | (lit., this TOPIC pen COPULA-POLITE) | As with all verbs in Japanese, it is necessary to mark the speaker's implied social relationship to the addressee by the choice of verb form. The following two sentences differ only in the fact that the first is appropriate only between decently close friends or family, or said by someone of significantly higher social status than the listener, and the second is only appropriate outside of such circumstances.
{| border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1"
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| ja | | | | Japanese has two classes of words which correspond to adjectives in English, one of which requires a copula to become a predicate and one of which does not.
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| ja | | "This beer is delicious." | |
| ja | | "This beer is extravagant." | |
| ja | | invalid, as {{transliteration | oishii}} is its own predicate and does not need a copula to make it a predicate | However, the polite copula {{transliteration|ja|desu}} is used as a means to mark the self-predicating class of adjectives as grammatically formal, and thus the formal equivalent of {{transliteration|ja|kono bīru wa oishii}} is {{transliteration|ja|kono bīru wa oishii desu}}. In these situations, the copula is not serving as an actual predication device; it is only a means to supply formality marking.The non-self-predicating class of adjectives is the one place in modern Japanese where a separate relativiser form appears; these require the form {{transliteration|ja|na}} in order to modify nouns.
{| border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1"
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| ja | | "This beer is delicious." | |
| ja | | "delicious beer" | |
| ja | | "This beer is extravagant." | |
| ja | | "extravagant beer" | |
| ja | | invalid, as this class of adjectives cannot just be placed next to a noun to modify it | |
| ja | | invalid, as the copula form {{transliteration | da}} requires a specially marked form when it heads a relative clause, unlike all other verbs in modern Japanese |
Etymologically the copula is a reduced form of {{transliteration|ja|de aru}}, which effectively means 'exists as'; in formal situations {{transliteration|ja|de aru}} or its formal form {{transliteration|ja|de arimasu}} can appear in place of {{transliteration|ja|da}} or {{transliteration|ja|desu}}, and in certain situations other forms of {{transliteration|ja|aru}} may be appropriate (such as {{transliteration|ja|gozaru}}/{{transliteration|ja|gozaimasu}}). Nonstandard forms such as {{transliteration|ja|ya}} in Kansai and {{transliteration|ja|ja}} in much of the rest of western Japan (see map above) are due to various dialects reducing {{transliteration|ja|de aru}} differently than the KantÅ-based standard form did.The negative form of the copula is generally {{transliterate|ja|de wa nai}} or its reduced form {{transliterate|ja|ja nai}} (or in formal situations, substitute {{transliterate|ja|arimasen}} for {{transliterate|ja|nai}}). This includes the topic marker {{transliterate|ja|wa}}, due to negative copula sentences typically implying some kind of contrastive topic-like force on the complement. {{transliterate|ja|De nai}} can occur in relative clauses, where information structure marking might be odd, but {{transliterate|ja|de wa nai}} is also a general negative copula and would be sensible still in any situation {{transliterate|ja|de nai}} might be used.Many sentences in Japanese are structurally a headless relative clause nominalised by {{transliterate|ja|no}} (or its reduced form {{transliterate|ja|n}}) and then predicated with a copula; the structure is analogous to something like English it's that.... This structure is used to indicate that the statement is intended to answer a question or explain confusion a listener may have had (though the question it answers may not have ever been overtly spoken). This has largely been incorporated into Japanese's sentence-final particle system, and is far more common than the equivalent English structure.
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| ja | | "It's over there." | |
| ja | | "(What's going on is that) it's over there." | Similarly, {{transliteration|ja|ja nai}} has also been recruited into the sentence-final particle system, and is used to mark a sentence that the speaker should have been decently obvious to the listener, or to indicate that the speaker is surprised to find that the sentence is true. In this role it can cooccur with an actual predicative {{transliteration|ja|ja nai}}, but not with the positive {{transliteration|ja|da}}; {{transliteration|ja|da}} is omitted in such sentences.
{| border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1"
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| ja | | ja|ja nai}} as a sentence-final particle is not a separate phonological unit while as a negative copula it is) | |
| ja | | "Why, it isn't tomorrow!" |
Korean For sentences with predicate nominatives, the copula "ì´" (i-) is added to the predicate nominative (with no space in between).
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| ë°ëëë ê³¼ì¼ì´ë¤.Ba-na-na-neun gwa-il-i-da. >| "Bananas are a fruit." | Some adjectives (usually colour adjectives) are nominalized and used with the copula "ì´"(i-).1. Without the copula "ì´"(i-):
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| ì¥ë¯¸ë 빨ê°ì.Jang-mi-neun ppal-gae-yo.>| "Roses are red." | 2. With the copula "ì´"(i-):
{| border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1"
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| ì¥ë¯¸ë 빨ê°ìì´ë¤.Jang-mi-neun ppal-gan-saek-i-da.>| "Roses are red-coloured." | Some Korean adjectives are derived using the copula. Separating these articles and nominalizing the former part will often result in a sentence with a related, but different meaning. Using the separated sentence in a situation where the un-separated sentence is appropriate is usually acceptable as the listener can decide what the speaker is trying to say using the context. Chinese {{See also|Chinese adjectives|Chinese particles|Chinese grammar}}{{notice|small=left |style=width: auto; margin-right: 0px; |textstyle=width: auto; |This section uses Simplified Chinese characters, and pronunciation is indicated using Standard Chinese pinyin}}In Chinese, both states and qualities are, in general, expressed with stative verbs (SV) with no need for a copula, e.g., in Chinese, "to be tired" (ç´¯ lèi), "to be hungry" (饿 è), "to be located at" (å¨ zà i), "to be stupid" (笨 bèn) and so forth. A sentence can consist simply of a pronoun and such a verb: for example, æ饿 wÇ Ã¨ ("I am hungry"). Usually, however, verbs expressing qualities are qualified by an adverb (meaning "very", "not", "quite", etc.); when not otherwise qualified, they are often preceded by å¾ hÄn, which in other contexts means "very", but in this use often has no particular meaning.Only sentences with a noun as the complement (e.g., "This is my sister") use the copular verb "to be": {{Zh|c=|p=shì|labels=no}}. This is used frequently; for example, instead of having a verb meaning "to be Chinese", the usual expression is "to be a Chinese person" ({{Zh|p=wÇ shì ZhÅngguórén|labels=no|s=|t=|first=|c=}}; {{Abbr|{{small|lit.}}|literally}} "I am a Chinese person;" "I am Chinese"). This {{Zh|c=æ¯|labels=no}} is sometimes called an equative verb. Another possibility is for the complement to be just a noun modifier (ending in {{Zh|c=|p=de|labels=no}}), the noun being omitted: {{Zh|p=wÇ de qìchÄ shì hóngsè de|labels=no|s=|l=My car is red. {{small|(noun phrase indicator)}}|c=|t=}}Before the Han dynasty, the character æ¯ served as a demonstrative pronoun meaning "this." (This usage survives in some idioms and (wikiquote:Chinese proverbs|proverbs).) Some linguists believe that æ¯ developed into a copula because it often appeared, as a repetitive subject, after the subject of a sentence (in classical Chinese we can say, for example: "George W. Bush, this president of the United States" meaning "George W. Bush is the president of the United States).BOOK, Pulleyblank, Edwin G., Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar, UBC Press, 1995, Vancouver, 0-7748-0541-2, {{page needed|date=January 2015}} The character æ¯ appears to be formed as a compound of characters with the meanings of "early" and "straight."Another use of æ¯ in modern Chinese is in combination with the modifier ç de to mean "yes" or to show agreement. For example: Question: ä½ ç汽车æ¯ä¸æ¯çº¢è²çï¼ nÇ de qìchÄ shì bú shì hóngsè de? "Is your car red or not?"{{pb}}Response: æ¯ç shì de "Is", meaning "Yes", or ä¸æ¯ bú shì "Not is", meaning "No." (A more common way of showing that the person asking the question is correct is by simply saying "right" or "correct", 对 duì; the corresponding negative answer is ä¸å¯¹ bú duì, "not right.")Yet another use of æ¯ is in the shì...(de) construction, which is used to emphasize a particular element of the sentence; see {{Slink|Chinese grammar|Cleft sentences}}.In Hokkien æ¯ sÄ« acts as the copula, and æ¯ {{IPA|/z/}} is the equivalent in Wu Chinese. Cantonese uses ä¿ ({{Zh|j=hai6}}) instead of æ¯; similarly, Hakka uses ä¿ he55.Siouan languagesIn Siouan languages like Lakota, in principle almost all wordsâaccording to their structureâare verbs. So not only (transitive, intransitive and so-called "stative") verbs but even nouns often behave like verbs and do not need to have copulas.For example, the word refers to a man, and the verb {{gloss|to be a man}} is expressed as {{gloss|I am/you are/he is a man}}. Yet there also is a copula {{gloss|to be a ...}} that in most cases is used: {{gloss|I am/you are/he is a man}}.In order to express the statement {{gloss|I am a doctor of profession}}, one has to say . But, in order to express that that person is THE doctor (say, that had been phoned to help), one must use another copula {{gloss|to be the one}}: {{gloss|medicine-man DEF ART I-am-the-one MALE ASSERT}}.In order to refer to space (e.g., Robert is in the house), various verbs are used, e.g., (lit., {{gloss|to sit}}) for humans, or {{gloss|to stand upright}} for inanimate objects of a certain shape. "Robert is in the house" could be translated as , whereas "There's one restaurant next to the gas station" translates as Constructed languages The constructed language Lojban has two words that act similar to a copula in natural languages. The clause turns whatever follows it into a predicate that means to be (among) what it follows. For example, means "to be Bob", and means "to be one of the three sisters". Another one is , which is itself a predicate that means all its arguments are the same thing (equal).Lojban For Beginners {{webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20060830212608weblink |date=2006-08-30 }} One word which is often confused for a copula in Lojban, but is not one, is . It merely indicates that the word which follows is the main predicate of the sentence. For example, means "my friend is a musician", but the word does not correspond to English is; instead, the word , which is a predicate, corresponds to the entire phrase "is a musician". The word is used to prevent , which would mean "the friend-of-me type of musician".WEB, The Complete Lojban Language,weblink The Lojban Reference Grammar, 3 July 2019,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20190410225800weblink">weblink 10 April 2019, dead, See also
Citations {{Reflist|30em}} General references
- BOOK, Moro, Andrea, Andrea Moro, March 2018, A Brief History of The Verb "to be",weblink MIT Press, 978-0-262-03712-9, 304,
- BOOK, Write Well: Improving Writing Skills,weblink Barli, Bram, 5 July 1995, Penerbit Kanisius, Yogyakarta (city), Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 978-979-497-378-3, Bram95, 128,
- BOOK, The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Volumes IâV,weblink illustrated, revised, Martin, Everaert, Henk van Riemsdijk, van Riemsdijk, Henk, Blackwell Publishing, Wiley-Blackwell, 978-1-4051-1485-1, 849, 2006, (See "copular sentences" and "existential sentences and expletive there" in Volume II.)
- BOOK, Howe, Catherine, Desmarattes, Jean Lionel, 1990, Haitian Creole Newspaper Reader,weblink Dunwoody Press, 978-0-931745-59-1, Howe90, 232,
- BOOK, William Kneale, Kneale, William and Martha Kneale, 1962, The Development of Logic, Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 373178, 0-19-824183-6,
- Moro, A. (1997) The Raising of Predicates. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.
- BOOK, Smith, Ron F, O'Connell, Loraine M., March 2003, Editing Today Workbook,weblink 2nd, Blackwell Publishing, Wiley-Blackwell, 978-0-8138-1317-2, Smith03, 264,
- Tüting, A. W. (December 2003). Essay on Lakota syntax. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110719003246weblink |date=2011-07-19 }}.
- BOOK, Valdman, Albert, 1988, Rosemond, Renote, Ann Pale Kreyòl: An Introductory Course in Haitian Creole,weblink Illustrated, Illustrations: Philippe, Pierre-Henri, Creole Institute, Indiana University, 978-0-929236-00-1, Vald88,
Further reading
- BOOK, A brief history of the verb "to be", Andrea Moro, 2018, 978-0-262-03712-9, MIT Press,
- BOOK, The Story of Be: A Verb's-Eye View of the English Language, David Crystal, 2017, 978-0-19-879109-6, Oxford University Press,
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