Copula
Encyclopedia
In linguistics
, a copula (plural: copulae or copulas) is a word used to link the subject
of a sentence
with a predicate
(a subject complement). The word copula derives from the Latin
noun
for a link or tie that connects two different things.
A copula is often a verb
or a verb-like word, though this is not universally the case. 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. Other copulae show more resemblances to pronoun
s. This is the case for Classical Chinese
and Guarani
, for instance. In highly synthetic language
s, copulae are often suffix
es, attached to a noun, that may still behave otherwise like ordinary verbs, for example -u- in Inuit languages. In some other languages, such as 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 verb
s. This phenomenon is known as nonverbal person agreement or nonverbal subject agreement and the relevant markers are always established as deriving from clitic
ised independent pronouns.
In general, the term copula is used to refer to the main copular verb(s) in a language. In the case of English, this is the verb to be. The term can also be used to refer to some other verbs in the language that fulfill similar functions. Other English copulae include to become, to get, to feel, and to seem. Other verbs can have secondary uses as copulative verbs. In the following example, the past tense of the verb to fall is used as a copula: "The zebra fell victim to the lion." These extra copulae are sometimes called "semi-copulae" or "pseudo-copulae".
Most languages have one main copula, but some languages, like Spanish
and Thai
, have more than one, and some have none.
The auxiliary verb function derives from the copular function; and, depending on one's point of view, one can still interpret the verb as a copula and the following verbal form as being adjectival. Abelard in his Dialectica made an argument against the idea that the copula can express existence based on a reductio ad absurdum
.
but is also used by a variety of English speakers in informal contexts. An example: "Where you at? We at the store."
is the use of two successive copulae when only one is necessary, as in My point is, is that.... Use of the double copula is one of the disputes in English grammar.
") have just four separate forms, e.g., "start", "starts", "starting", "started". A sizable minority (traditionally known as "strong verbs
") have five separate forms, e.g., "begin", "begins", "beginning", "began", "begun". "To be" is a very special case in having eight forms: "be", "am", "is", "are", "being", "was", "were", "been". At one time, it had even more, including "art", "wast", "wert", and, on occasion, "beest" as a subjunctive.
Example 1 includes John in the set of all doctors. Example 2 includes John and Mary both in the set of all doctors. Example 3 includes the set of doctors in the set of those who are educated.
Example 4 is different. Example 4 includes Mary's state
at the time of utterance in the set of states consistent with running
. Example 5 then includes the set of states consistent with running in the set of states consistent with fun.
Note that this approach falters, in part, with the verb "to appear". In the sentence "Sam appears to be happy", "appears" is a copula. Yet, "seems" but not "is" can be substituted: "Sam is to be happy" means something else entirely.
of German ist, Latin est and Russianjest' , even though the Germanic, Italic, and Slavic language groups split at least three thousand years ago. The origins of the Indo-European copula
e can be traced back to four different stems *es- (*h1es-), *sta- (*steh2-), *wes- and *bhu- (*bʰuH-) in most Indo-European languages.
(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:
Note that, in the last two examples (perfect 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 perfective and the pluperfective are expressed in the following way:
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.
, Hungarian
, Arabic
, Hebrew
, and Quechuan languages consistently drop the copula in present tense: Russian: я — человек, ya — chelovek "I (am) a human"; Hungarian: ő ember, "he (is) a human"; Arabic: أنا إنسان ʔanā ʔinsān, "I am human"; Hebrew: אני בן-אדם, "I (am a) human"; Southern Quechua: payqa runam "s/he (is) a human". This usage is known generically as the zero copula. Note that in other tenses (sometimes in other persons besides third singular) the copula usually reappears.
In Ancient Greek, when an adjective precedes a noun with an article, the copula is understood. Thus, ὁ οἴκος ἐστὶ μακρός, "the house is large," can be written μακρός ὁ οἴκος, "large the house (is)."
In Quechua —Southern Quechua
used for the examples—, zero copula is restricted to present tense in third person singular only (kan): Payqa runam — "(s)he is a human"; but: (paykuna) runakunam kanku "(they) are human".
In Hungarian, zero copula is restricted to present tense in third person singular and plural: Ő ember/Ők emberek — "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 optionally get omitted in colloquial language: hat óra (van), "it is six o'clock."
Hungarian uses a copula to say Itt van Róbert "Bob is here" (and this not only with regard to third person singular/plural), but not to say Róbert öreg "Bob is old". This is to relate a subject to a more temporary condition/state taking place in space (very often in the sense of Lojban
zvati: la rabyrt. zvati ne'i le zdani "Robert is in the house").
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 following pronoun é, í, iad preceding the noun is omitted as well.
e 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, another of that Latin verb's principal parts
. The resulting distinction in the modern forms is found in Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, 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). (Note that the English words just used, "essential" and "state", are also cognate with the Latin infinitives esse and stare.) In Spanish, the high degree of verbal inflection
, plus the existence of two copulae (ser and estar), means that there are 105 separate forms to express the copula, compared to eight in English and one in Chinese.
In some cases, the verb itself changes the meaning of the adjective/sentence. The following examples are from Portuguese:
In certain languages, not only are there two copulae but the syntax
is also changed when one is distinguishing between states or situations and essential characteristics. For example, in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, describing the subject's state or situation typically uses the normal VSO ordering with the verb bí. The copula is, which is used to state essential characteristics or equivalences, requires a change in word order so that the subject does not immediately follow the copula (see Irish syntax
).
In Slavic languages, a similar distinction is made by putting a state in the instrumental case
, while characteristics are in the nominative
. This is used with all the copulae (e.g., "become" is normally used with the instrumental). It also allows the distinction to be made when the copula is omitted (zero copula) in East Slavic languages (in other Slavic languages the copula is not omitted).
The word "is" is the copula (rhymes with the English word "hiss").
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, "í" is used (for "she" or "it"), as opposed to normal pronoun "sí"; for plural nouns, "iad" is used (for "they" or "those"), as opposed to the normal pronoun "siad".
To describe non-permanent states, "to be" is used, e.g., Tá mé ag rith "I am running".
This system resembles the Essence versus state distinction of the Romance copula.
, a French-based creole language, has a reputation as being rather exotic from a linguistic standpoint when compared to French and the other Romance languages; its copula system is one of the exotic linguistic features. It has three forms of the copula: se, ye, and the zero copula
, no word at all (the position of which will be indicated with Ø, just for purposes of illustration).
Although no textual record exists of Haitian at its earliest stages of development from French, se is derived from French se (written c'est), which is the normal French contraction of sə (that, written ce) and the copula e (is, written est) (a form of the verb être). Note that French had long since lost any Latin esse/stare distinction by time of the the colonization of Haiti, and so no such distinction appears in Haitian Creole.
The derivation of ye is less obvious; but we can assume that the French source was ile ("he/it is", written il est), which, in rapidly spoken French, is very commonly pronounced as je (typically written y est).
The use of a zero copula is unknown in French, and it is thought to be an innovation from the early days when Haitian was first developing as a Romance-based pidgin
. Latin also sometimes used a zero copula.
Which of se / ye / Ø is used in any given copula clause depends on complex syntactic factors that we can superficially summarize in the following four rules:
1. Use Ø (i.e., no word at all) in declarative sentences where the complement is an adjective phrase, prepositional phrase, or adverb phrase:
2. Use se when the complement is a noun phrase. But note that, whereas other verbs come after any tense/mood/aspect particles (like pa to mark negation, or te to explicitly mark past tense, or ap to mark progressive aspect), se comes before any such particles:
3. Use se where French and English have a dummy "it"
subject:
4. Finally, use the other copula form ye in situations where the sentence's syntax leaves the copula at the end of a phrase:
The above is, however, only a simplified analysis.
has copulae that would most often be translated as one of the so-called be-verbs of English.
The Japanese copula has many forms. The words da and desu are used to predicate
sentences, while na and de are particles used within sentences to modify or connect.
Japanese sentences with copulae most often equate one thing with another, that is, they are of the form "A is B." Examples:
The difference between da and desu appears simple. For instance desu is more formal and polite than da. Thus, many sentences such as the ones below are almost identical in meaning and differ in the speaker's politeness to the addressee
and in nuance of how assured the person is of their statement. However, desu may never come before the end of a sentence, and da is used exclusively to delineate subordinate clauses. In addition, da is always declarative, never interrogative.
Japanese sentences may be predicated with copulae or with verbs. However, desu may not always be a predicate. In some cases, its only function is to make a sentence predicated with a stative verb
more polite. However, da always functions as a predicate, so it cannot be combined with a stative verb, because sentences need only one predicate. See the examples below.
There are several theories as to the origin of desu; one is that it is a shortened form of であります de arimasu, which is a polite form of である de aru. In general, both forms are used in only writing and more formal situations. Another form, でございます de gozaimasu, which is the more formal version of de arimasu, in the etymological sense a conjugation of でござる de gozaru and an honorific suffix -ます -masu, is also used in some situations and is very polite. Note that de aru and de gozaru are considered to be compounds of a particle で de, and existential verbs aru and gozaru. です desu may be pronounced っす ssu in colloquial speech. The copula is subject to dialectal variation throughout Japan, resulting in forms such as や ya (in Kansai) and じゃ ja (in Hiroshima
).
Japanese also has two verbs corresponding to English "to be": aru and iru. They are not copulae but existential verbs. Aru is used for inanimate objects, including plants, whereas iru is used for animate things like people, animals, and robots, though there are exceptions to this generalization.
Japanese people, when learning English, usually drop the auxiliary verbs "be" and "do" due to believing incorrectly that "be" is a semantically empty copula equivalent to "desu" and "da".
Predicate Adjectives can be handled in at least three ways. In all three ways, the adjective and verb are connected as one word.
1. With the copula "이다":
2. With the verb "하다" (ha-da):
3. With stative verbs:
Some English descriptions do not use the copula in Korean. For example, instead of saying "Ice cream is delicious", Koreans commonly say "Ice cream has flavor" (With has-flavor often combined into one word, but sometimes not).
The opposite, ice cream is gross, uses the Korean word "없다" (eopt-da), meaning "to not have".
pronunciation, using the Pinyin
system.
In Chinese
languages, both states and qualities are, in general, expressed with stative verb
s (SV) with no need for a copula, e.g., in Mandarin, "to be tired" (累 lèi), "to be hungry" (饿 è), "to be located at" (在 zài), "to be stupid" (笨 bèn) and so forth. These verbs are usually preceded by an adverb such as 很 hěn ("very") or 不 bù ("not"). A sentence could also simply use a pronoun and a verb: for example, 我饿。 wǒ è. "I am hungry."
Only sentences with a noun as the complement (e.g., "this is my sister") use the verb "to be": 是 shì. This is used frequently: For example, instead of having a verb meaning "to be Chinese", the usual expression is "to be a Chinese person", using 是 shì. Some scholars call this verb form an equative verb (EV), as published in some Yale Chinese textbooks.
The history of the Chinese copula 是 is a controversial subject. Before the Han Dynasty
, the character served as a demonstrative pronoun meaning "this" (this usage survives in some idioms and proverbs, as well as in Japanese). Some linguists argue that 是 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). Other scholars do not completely accept the explanation, proposing that 是 served as a demonstrative pronoun and a copula at the same time in ancient Chinese. Etymologically
, 是 developed from the meaning of "straight"; in modern Chinese, however, it can be combined with the modifier 的 de to mean "yes" or to show agreement.
e.g. Question: 你的汽车是不是红色的？ nǐ de qìchē shì bú shì hóngsè de? "Is your car red or not?"
Response: 是的。 shì de. "Is.", meaning "Yes.", or 不是。 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, which drops the modifier 的 de; the corresponding negative answer is 不对 bú duì, "Not right."
In Hokkien
是 sī acts as the copula, and 是 /z/ is the equivalent in Wu Chinese. Cantonese
uses 係 (Jyutping
: hai6) instead of 是; similarly, Hakka uses 係 he55.
, in principle almost all words — according to their structure — are verbs. So, not very unlike in Lojban (see below), not only (transitive, intransitive and so-called 'stative') verbs but even nouns often behave like verbs and do not need to have copulae.
For example, the word wičháša refers to a man, and the verb "to-be-a-man" is expressed as wimáčhaša/winíčhaša/wičháša (I am/you are/he is a man). Yet there also is a copula héčha (to be a ...) that in most cases is used: wičháša hemáčha/heníčha/héčha (I am/you are/he is a man).
In order to express the statement "I am a doctor of profession," one has to say pezuta wičháša hemáčha. But, in order to express that that person is THE doctor (say, that had been phoned to help), one must use another copula iyé (to be the one): pežúta wičháša (kiŋ) miyé yeló (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., yaŋkÁ (lit.: to sit) for humans, or háŋ/hé (to stand upright) for inanimate objects of a certain shape. "Robert is in the house" could be translated as Robert thimáhel yaŋké (yeló), whereas "there's one restaurant next to the gas station" translates as "owótethipi wígli-oínažiŋ kiŋ hél isákhib waŋ hé".
Lojban
has copulae, but they are rarely used, and are sometimes viewed with distaste in the Lojban community, because all words that express a predicate can be used as verbs. The three sentences "Bob runs", "Bob is old", and "Bob is a fireman", for instance, would all have the same form in Lojban: la bob. bajra, la bob. tolcitno, and la bob. fagdirpre. There are several different copulae: me turns whatever follows the word me into a verb that means to be what it follows. For example, me la bob. means to be Bob. Another copula is du, which is a verb that means all its arguments are the same thing (equal).
The E-Prime
language, based on English, simply avoids the issue by not having a generic copula. It requires instead a specific form such as "remains", "becomes", "lies", or "equals".
Esperanto
uses the copula much as English. The infinitive is esti, and the whole conjugation is regular (as with all Esperanto verbs). In addition, adjectival roots can be turned into stative verbs: La ĉielo bluas. "The sky is blue."
Likewise, Ido
has a copula that works as English "to be". Its infinitive is esar, and, as is the case in Esperanto, all of its forms are regular: The simple present is esas for all persons; the simple past is esis, the simple future is esos, and the imperative is esez, among a few more forms. However, Ido also has an alternative irregular form for the simple present ("es"), which some Idists frown upon. The possibility to turn adjectives and even nouns into verbs also exist, although this is mostly done by means of an affix, on top of the verbal endings. The affix is "-es-". So, "The sky is blue." can be said as "La cielo bluesas". As can be seen, the suffix "-es-" plus the verbal desinence "-as" are simply the verb "to be" annexed to the adjectival or nominal root.
Interlingua
speakers use copulae with the same freedom as speakers of Slavic, Germanic, and Romance languages. In addition to combinations with esser ('to be'), expressions such as cader prede ('to fall prey') are common. Esser is stated, rather than omitted as in Russian.
like there - rather than existential use of the verb itself. So, for example in English, a sentence like "there is a problem" would be considered an instance of existential construction. Relying on unified theory of copular sentences, it has been proposed that there-sentences are subtypes of inverse copular sentences (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).
For example:
Other languages prefer to keep the existential usage entirely separate from the copula. Swedish, for example, reserves vara (to be) for the copula, keeping bli (to become) and finnas (to exist, lit. to be found) for becoming and existing, respectively.
In Spanish, ser (to be) is the copula, and estar (to be, to remain) and existir (to exist) are for being in a place and existing, respectively.
In ontology
, philosophical discussions of the word "be" and its conjugations takes place over the meaning of the word is, the third person singular form of 'be', and whether the other senses can be reduced
to one sense. For example, 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. Of course, the gerund form of "be", being, is its own (vexed) topic: see being
and existence
.
precedes the predicate
- as in "a picture of the wall is the cause of the riot," there can also be a symmetric type wherein the order of the two noun phrases is mirrored as in "the cause of the riot is a picture of the wall" (cf. Everaert et al. 2006). Although these two sentences are superficially very similar, it can be shown that they embody very different properties. So, for example, it is possible to form a sentence like "which riot do you think that a picture of the wall is the cause of" but not "*which wall do you think that the cause of the riot was a picture of". The distinction between these two types of sentences, in the technical sense referred to as "canonical" vs. inverse copula
r sentences, respectively - and the unified theory of copular sentences associated to it - has been proven to be valid across-languages and has led to some refinement of the theory of clause structure. In particular, it challenges one of the major dogmas of the theory of clause structure, i.e., that the two basic constituents of a sentence Noun Phrase and Verb Phrase are associated to the logical/grammatical functions of subject and predicate (cf. phrase structure rules
and sentence (linguistics)
).
This perspective has been argued against on empirical grounds, since the Noun Phrase
that cooccurs with the Verb Phrase
in a copular sentence can be the predicate and the subject be contained in the Verb Phrase. It has been suggested that inverse copular sentences appear to play a sharp role in setting the pro-drop parameter. In Italian, for example, in sentences of the type Noun Phrase verb Noun Phrase, the verb, in general, agrees with the Noun Phrase on the left with one exception: inverse copular sentences. One can construe minimal pairs like the cause of the riot is/*are these pictures of the wall vs. la causa della rivolta sono/*è queste foto del muro: The two sentences are one the gloss of the other with only one difference: The copula is singular in Italian and plural in English. If one does not want to give up the idea that agreement is on the left, then the only option is to assume that pro occurs between the copula and the Noun Phrase on the left. That pro can occur as a predicate must be in fact independently assumed to assign a proper structure to sentences like sono io (am I: "it's me"), which can by no means be considered a transformation of *io sono, which has no meaning.
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, a copula (plural: copulae or copulas) is a word used to link the subject
Subject (grammar)
The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
of a sentence
Sentence (linguistics)
In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it...
with a predicate
Predicate (grammar)
There are two competing notions of the predicate in theories of grammar. Traditional grammar tends to view a predicate as one of two main parts of a sentence, the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies. The other understanding of predicates is inspired from work in predicate calculus...
(a subject complement). The word copula derives from the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
for a link or tie that connects two different things.
A copula is often a verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
or a verb-like word, though this is not universally the case. A verb that is a copula is sometimes called a copulative or copular verb. In English primary education
Primary education
A primary school is an institution in which children receive the first stage of compulsory education known as primary or elementary education. Primary school is the preferred term in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth Nations, and in most publications of the United Nations Educational,...
grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
courses, a copula is often called a linking verb. Other copulae show more resemblances to pronoun
Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
s. This is the case for Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese...
and Guarani
Guaraní language
Guaraní, specifically the primary variety known as Paraguayan Guaraní , is an indigenous language of South America that belongs to the Tupí–Guaraní subfamily of the Tupian languages. It is one of the official languages of Paraguay , where it is spoken by the majority of the population, and half of...
, for instance. In highly synthetic language
Synthetic language
In linguistic typology, a synthetic language is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio, as opposed to a low morpheme-per-word ratio in what is described as an isolating language...
s, copulae are often suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
es, attached to a noun, that may still behave otherwise like ordinary verbs, for example -u- in Inuit languages. In some other languages, such as Beja
Beja language
Beja or North Cushitic is an Afro-Asiatic language of the southern coast of the Red Sea, spoken by about two million nomads, the Beja, in parts of Egypt, Sudan, and Eritrea.-Classification:...
and Ket
Ket language
The Ket language, formerly known as Yenisei Ostyak, is a Siberian language long thought to be an isolate, the sole surviving language of a Yeniseian language family...
, the copula takes the form of suffixes that attach to a noun but are distinct from the person agreement markers
Grammatical conjugation
In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...
used on predicative verb
Predicative verb
A predicative verb is a verb that behaves as a grammatical adjective; that is, it predicates . It is a special kind of stative verb....
s. This phenomenon is known as nonverbal person agreement or nonverbal subject agreement and the relevant markers are always established as deriving from clitic
Clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
ised independent pronouns.
In general, the term copula is used to refer to the main copular verb(s) in a language. In the case of English, this is the verb to be. The term can also be used to refer to some other verbs in the language that fulfill similar functions. Other English copulae include to become, to get, to feel, and to seem. Other verbs can have secondary uses as copulative verbs. In the following example, the past tense of the verb to fall is used as a copula: "The zebra fell victim to the lion." These extra copulae are sometimes called "semi-copulae" or "pseudo-copulae".
Most languages have one main copula, but some languages, like Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
and Thai
Thai language
Thai , also known as Central Thai and Siamese, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively...
, have more than one, and some have none.
Use
Several uses of the copula can be categorized:- Identity: "I only want to be myself." "When the area behind the dam fills, it will be a lake." "The Morning Star is the Evening Star." "Boys will be boys."
- Class membership. To belong to a set or class: "She could be a nurse." "Dogs are canines." "Moscow is a large city." Depending on one's point of view, all other uses can be considered derivatives of this use, including the following non-copular uses in English, as they all express a subsetSubsetIn mathematics, especially in set theory, a set A is a subset of a set B if A is "contained" inside B. A and B may coincide. The relationship of one set being a subset of another is called inclusion or sometimes containment...
relationship.
- Predication (property and relation attribution): "It hurts to be blue." "Will that house be big enough?" "The hen is next to the cockerel." "I am confused." Such attributes may also relate to temporary conditions as well as inherent qualities: "I will be tired after running." "Will you be going to the play tomorrow?" but please note that a linking verb has nothing to do with these so called "Be"- verbs (see below).
Non-copular uses
- The verb that often is used as a copula can also be used as an auxiliary verbAuxiliary verbIn linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one or more of the following functions: passive voice,...
:- To form the passive voice: "I was told that you wanted to see me"
- To form progressive tenses in English: "It is raining"
- "To be" also has a non-copular use meaning "to exist" (existential verb): "I want only to be, and that is enough." "There's no sense in making a scientific inquiry about what species the Loch Ness Monster is, without first establishing that the Loch Ness Monster indeed is." "To be or not to be, that is the question." "I think therefore I amCogito ergo sumis a philosophical Latin statement proposed by . The simple meaning of the phrase is that someone wondering whether or not they exist is, in and of itself, proof that something, an "I", exists to do the thinking — However this "I" is not the more or less permanent person we call "I"...
."
The auxiliary verb function derives from the copular function; and, depending on one's point of view, one can still interpret the verb as a copula and the following verbal form as being adjectival. Abelard in his Dialectica made an argument against the idea that the copula can express existence based on a reductio ad absurdum
Reductio ad absurdum
In logic, proof by contradiction is a form of proof that establishes the truth or validity of a proposition by showing that the proposition's being false would imply a contradiction...
.
Copula omission
In informal speech of English, the copula may be dropped. This is a feature of African American Vernacular EnglishAfrican American Vernacular English
African American Vernacular English —also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular , or Black Vernacular English —is an African American variety of American English...
but is also used by a variety of English speakers in informal contexts. An example: "Where you at? We at the store."
Double copula
The double copulaDouble copula
The double copula, also known as the double is and reduplicative copula, is the nonstandard usage of two successive copulae in the English language when only one is necessary. For example:...
is the use of two successive copulae when only one is necessary, as in My point is, is that.... Use of the double copula is one of the disputes in English grammar.
Conjugation
As in most Indo-European languages, the English copula is the most irregular verb because of constant use. Most English verbs (traditionally known as "weak verbsWeak inflection
In grammar, the term weak is used in opposition to the term strong to designate a conjugation or declension when a language has two parallel systems...
") have just four separate forms, e.g., "start", "starts", "starting", "started". A sizable minority (traditionally known as "strong verbs
Strong inflection
A strong inflection is a system of verb conjugation or noun/adjective declension which can be contrasted with an alternative system in the same language, which is then known as a weak inflection. The term strong was coined with reference to the Germanic verb, but has since been used of other...
") have five separate forms, e.g., "begin", "begins", "beginning", "began", "begun". "To be" is a very special case in having eight forms: "be", "am", "is", "are", "being", "was", "were", "been". At one time, it had even more, including "art", "wast", "wert", and, on occasion, "beest" as a subjunctive.
Subset relator
From one perspective, the copula always relates two things as subsets. Take the following examples:- John is a doctor.
- John and Mary are doctors.
- Doctors are educated.
- Mary is running.
- Running is fun.
Example 1 includes John in the set of all doctors. Example 2 includes John and Mary both in the set of all doctors. Example 3 includes the set of doctors in the set of those who are educated.
Example 4 is different. Example 4 includes Mary's state
Stative verb
A stative verb is one that asserts that one of its arguments has a particular property . Statives differ from other aspectual classes of verbs in that they are static; that is, they have undefined duration...
at the time of utterance in the set of states consistent with running
Dynamic verb
A dynamic or finitive verb is a verb that shows continued or progressive action on the part of the subject. This is the opposite of a stative verb....
. Example 5 then includes the set of states consistent with running in the set of states consistent with fun.
Distinguishing between a copula and an action verb
A copula and an action verb can generally be differentiated by trying to substitute the verb with a form of "to seem" or "to be".- Example of an Action Verb: Sam looks at lettuce. Sam seems at lettuce? Sam is at lettuce? The latter two don't make sense, so "looks" in this case is being used as an action verb.
- Example of a Copula: Sam looks happy. Sam seems happy? Sam is happy? The latter two make sense; "looks" is used as a copula in this case.
Note that this approach falters, in part, with the verb "to appear". In the sentence "Sam appears to be happy", "appears" is a copula. Yet, "seems" but not "is" can be substituted: "Sam is to be happy" means something else entirely.
Copulae in other languages
In Indo-European languages, the words meaning "to be" often sound 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 an apparent cognateCognate
In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. This learned term derives from the Latin cognatus . Cognates within the same language are called doublets. Strictly speaking, loanwords from another language are usually not meant by the term, e.g...
of German ist, Latin est and Russian
Indo-European copula
A feature common to all Indo-European languages is the presence of a verb corresponding to the English verb to be. Though in some languages, such as Russian, it is vestigial, it is present nonetheless in atrophied forms or derivatives.-General features:...
e can be traced back to four different stems *es- (*h1es-), *sta- (*steh2-), *wes- and *bhu- (*bʰuH-) in most Indo-European languages.
Georgian and English
As in English, the verb "to be" (qopna) is irregular in GeorgianGeorgian language
Georgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 4 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...
(a Kartvelian language
South Caucasian languages
The Kartvelian languages are spoken primarily in Georgia, with a large group of ethnic Georgian speakers in Russia, the United States, the European Union, and northeastern parts of Turkey. There are approximately 5.2 million speakers of this language family worldwide.It is not known to be related...
); 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:
| 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." |
Note that, in the last two examples (perfect 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
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
(an Indo-European language
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
), where the perfective and the pluperfective are expressed in the following way:
| 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.
Zero copula (Semitic languages, Quechuan languages, Hungarian, Russian, Ancient Greek)
In some languages, copula omission occurs within a particular grammatical context. For example, speakers of RussianRussian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, and Quechuan languages consistently drop the copula in present tense: Russian: я — человек, ya — chelovek "I (am) a human"; Hungarian: ő ember, "he (is) a human"; Arabic: أنا إنسان ʔanā ʔinsān, "I am human"; Hebrew: אני בן-אדם, "I (am a) human"; Southern Quechua: payqa runam "s/he (is) a human". This usage is known generically as the zero copula. Note that in other tenses (sometimes in other persons besides third singular) the copula usually reappears.
In Ancient Greek, when an adjective precedes a noun with an article, the copula is understood. Thus, ὁ οἴκος ἐστὶ μακρός, "the house is large," can be written μακρός ὁ οἴκος, "large the house (is)."
In Quechua —Southern Quechua
Southern Quechua
Southern Quechua , or only Quechua, is the most widely spoken of the major regional groupings of mutually intelligible dialects within the Quechua language family, with about 5 million speakers...
used for the examples—, zero copula is restricted to present tense in third person singular only (kan): Payqa runam — "(s)he is a human"; but: (paykuna) runakunam kanku "(they) are human".
In Hungarian, zero copula is restricted to present tense in third person singular and plural: Ő ember/Ők emberek — "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 optionally get omitted in colloquial language: hat óra (van), "it is six o'clock."
Hungarian uses a copula to say Itt van Róbert "Bob is here" (and this not only with regard to third person singular/plural), but not to say Róbert öreg "Bob is old". This is to relate a subject to a more temporary condition/state taking place in space (very often in the sense of Lojban
Lojban
See also discussed by Arthur Protin, Bob LeChevalier, Carl Burke, Doug Landauer, Guy Steele, Jack Waugh, Jeff Prothero, Jim Carter, and Robert Chassell, as well as , the concepts which "average English speakers won't recognize" because most of them "have no exact English counterpart".Like most...
zvati: la rabyrt. zvati ne'i le zdani "Robert is in the house").
Further restrictions may apply before omission is permitted. For example, in the Irish language
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
, is, the present tense of the copula, may be omitted when the predicate
Predicate (grammar)
There are two competing notions of the predicate in theories of grammar. Traditional grammar tends to view a predicate as one of two main parts of a sentence, the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies. The other understanding of predicates is inspired from work in predicate calculus...
is a noun. Ba the past/conditional cannot be deleted. If the present copula is omitted, the following pronoun é, í, iad preceding the noun is omitted as well.
Essence versus state
Romance copulaRomance copula
The copula or copulae in all Romance languages largely derive from the Latin verbs "to be" ; "to stand" ; and "to sit"...
e usually consist of two different verbs that can be translated as "to be", the main one from the Latin esse (via Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...
essere; esse deriving from *es-), often referenced as sum, another of the Latin verb's principal parts
Principal parts
In language learning, the principal parts of a verb are those forms that a student must memorize in order to be able to conjugate the verb through all its forms.- English :...
), and a secondary one from stare (from *sta-), often referenced as sto, another of that Latin verb's principal parts
Principal parts
In language learning, the principal parts of a verb are those forms that a student must memorize in order to be able to conjugate the verb through all its forms.- English :...
. The resulting distinction in the modern forms is found in Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, 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). (Note that the English words just used, "essential" and "state", are also cognate with the Latin infinitives esse and stare.) In Spanish, the high degree of verbal inflection
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
, plus the existence of two copulae (ser and estar), means that there are 105 separate forms to express the copula, compared to eight in English and one in Chinese.
| Copula | Language | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Italian | Spanish | English | |
| Sum-derived | Bob è vecchio. | Bob es viejo. | "Bob is old." |
| Sto-derived | Bob sta bene. | Bob está bien. | "Bob is well." |
In some cases, the verb itself changes the meaning of the adjective/sentence. The following examples are from Portuguese:
| Copula | Example 1 | Example 2 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Portuguese | English | Portuguese | English | |
| Sum-derived | O Bob é bom. | "Bob is good." | O Bob é parvo. | "Bob is foolish." |
| Sto-derived | O Bob está bom. | "Bob is feeling good." | O Bob está parvo. | "Bob is acting/being silly." |
In certain languages, not only are there two copulae but the syntax
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
is also changed when one is distinguishing between states or situations and essential characteristics. For example, in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, describing the subject's state or situation typically uses the normal VSO ordering with the verb bí. The copula is, which is used to state essential characteristics or equivalences, requires a change in word order so that the subject does not immediately follow the copula (see Irish syntax
Irish syntax
Irish syntax is rather different from that of most Indo-European languages, notably because of its VSO word order.-Normal word order:The normal word order in an Irish sentence is:#Preverbal particle#Verb#Subject#Direct object or predicate adjective...
).
In Slavic languages, a similar distinction is made by putting a state in the instrumental case
Instrumental case
The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action...
, while characteristics are in the nominative
Nominative case
The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...
. This is used with all the copulae (e.g., "become" is normally used with the instrumental). It also allows the distinction to be made when the copula is omitted (zero copula) in East Slavic languages (in other Slavic languages the copula is not omitted).
Irish
In Irish, the copula is used for things that are in a permanent state.| Is fear Liam | "Liam is a man" | (lit., is man Liam) |
| Is leabhar é sin | "That is a book" | (lit., is book it that) |
The word "is" is the copula (rhymes with the English word "hiss").
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, "í" is used (for "she" or "it"), as opposed to normal pronoun "sí"; for plural nouns, "iad" is used (for "they" or "those"), as opposed to the normal pronoun "siad".
To describe non-permanent states, "to be" is used, e.g., Tá mé ag rith "I am running".
This system resembles the Essence versus state distinction of the Romance copula.
Haitian Creole
Haitian CreoleHaitian Creole language
Haitian Creole language , often called simply Creole or Kreyòl, is a language spoken in Haiti by about twelve million people, which includes all Haitians in Haiti and via emigration, by about two to three million speakers residing in the Bahamas, Cuba, Canada, France, Cayman Islands, French...
, a French-based creole language, has a reputation as being rather exotic from a linguistic standpoint when compared to French and the other Romance languages; its copula system is one of the exotic linguistic features. It has three forms of the copula: se, ye, and the zero copula
Zero copula
Zero copula is a linguistic phenomenon whereby the subject is joined to the predicate without overt marking of this relationship...
, no word at all (the position of which will be indicated with Ø, just for purposes of illustration).
Although no textual record exists of Haitian at its earliest stages of development from French, se is derived from French se (written c'est), which is the normal French contraction of sə (that, written ce) and the copula e (is, written est) (a form of the verb être). Note that French had long since lost any Latin esse/stare distinction by time of the the colonization of Haiti, and so no such distinction appears in Haitian Creole.
The derivation of ye is less obvious; but we can assume that the French source was ile ("he/it is", written il est), which, in rapidly spoken French, is very commonly pronounced as je (typically written y est).
The use of a zero copula is unknown in French, and it is thought to be an innovation from the early days when Haitian was first developing as a Romance-based pidgin
Pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...
. Latin also sometimes used a zero copula.
Which of se / ye / Ø is used in any given copula clause depends on complex syntactic factors that we can superficially summarize in the following four rules:
1. Use Ø (i.e., no word at all) in declarative sentences where the complement is an adjective phrase, prepositional phrase, or adverb phrase:
| Li te Ø an Ayiti. | "She was in Haiti." | (she past-tense in Haiti) |
| Liv-la Ø jon. | "The book is yellow." | (book-the yellow) |
| Timoun-yo Ø lakay. | "The kids are [at] home." | (kids-the home) |
2. Use se when the complement is a noun phrase. But note that, whereas other verbs come after any tense/mood/aspect particles (like pa to mark negation, or te to explicitly mark past tense, or ap to mark progressive aspect), se comes before any such particles:
| Chal se ekriven. | "Charles is writer." |
| Chal se pa ekriven. | "Charles is not writer." cf. with the verb kouri ("run"): Chal pa kouri, not Chal kouri pa. |
| Chal, ki se ekriven, pa vini. | "Charles, who is writer, not come." |
3. Use se where French and English have a dummy "it"
Dummy pronoun
A dummy pronoun is a type of pronoun used in non-pro-drop languages, such as English....
subject:
| Se mwen! | "It's me!" French C'est moi! |
| Se pa fasil. | "It's not easy," colloquial French C'est pas facile. |
4. Finally, use the other copula form ye in situations where the sentence's syntax leaves the copula at the end of a phrase:
| Kijan ou ye? | "How you are?" | |
| Pou kimoun liv-la te ye? | "Whose book was it?" | (of who book-the past-tense is?) |
| M pa konnen kimoun li ye. | "I don't know who he is." | (I not know who he is) |
| Se yon ekriven Chal ye. | "Charles is a writer!" | (it's a writer Charles is; cf. French C'est un écrivain qu'il est.) |
The above is, however, only a simplified analysis.
Japanese
JapaneseJapanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
has copulae that would most often be translated as one of the so-called be-verbs of English.
The Japanese copula has many forms. The words da and desu are used to predicate
Predicate (grammar)
There are two competing notions of the predicate in theories of grammar. Traditional grammar tends to view a predicate as one of two main parts of a sentence, the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies. The other understanding of predicates is inspired from work in predicate calculus...
sentences, while na and de are particles used within sentences to modify or connect.
Japanese sentences with copulae most often equate one thing with another, that is, they are of the form "A is B." Examples:
| 私は学生だ。 | Watashi wa gakusei da. | "I'm a student." | (lit., I TOPIC student COPULA) |
| これはペンです。 | Kore wa pen desu. | "This is a pen." | (lit., this TOPIC pen COPULA-POLITE) |
The difference between da and desu appears simple. For instance desu is more formal and polite than da. Thus, many sentences such as the ones below are almost identical in meaning and differ in the speaker's politeness to the addressee
Addressee
In linguistics, an addressee is an intended direct recipient of the speaker's communication. A listener is either an addressee or a bystander.Second-person pronouns refer to an addressee or a group including an addressee...
and in nuance of how assured the person is of their statement. However, desu may never come before the end of a sentence, and da is used exclusively to delineate subordinate clauses. In addition, da is always declarative, never interrogative.
| あれはホテルだ。 | Are wa hoteru da. | "That's a hotel." | (lit., that TOPIC hotel COPULA) |
| あれはホテルです。 | Are wa hoteru desu. | "That is a hotel." | (lit., that TOPIC hotel COPULA-POLITE) |
Japanese sentences may be predicated with copulae or with verbs. However, desu may not always be a predicate. In some cases, its only function is to make a sentence predicated with a stative verb
Stative verb
A stative verb is one that asserts that one of its arguments has a particular property . Statives differ from other aspectual classes of verbs in that they are static; that is, they have undefined duration...
more polite. However, da always functions as a predicate, so it cannot be combined with a stative verb, because sentences need only one predicate. See the examples below.
| このビールはおいしい。 | Kono bīru wa oishii. | "This beer is delicious." | (lit., this beer TOPIC be-tasty) |
| このビールはおいしいです。 | Kono bīru wa oishii desu. | "This beer is good." | (lit., this beer TOPIC be-tasty POLITE) |
| *このビールはおいしいだ。 | *Kono bīru wa oishii da. | This is unacceptable because da may only serve as a predicate. | |
There are several theories as to the origin of desu; one is that it is a shortened form of であります de arimasu, which is a polite form of である de aru. In general, both forms are used in only writing and more formal situations. Another form, でございます de gozaimasu, which is the more formal version of de arimasu, in the etymological sense a conjugation of でござる de gozaru and an honorific suffix -ます -masu, is also used in some situations and is very polite. Note that de aru and de gozaru are considered to be compounds of a particle で de, and existential verbs aru and gozaru. です desu may be pronounced っす ssu in colloquial speech. The copula is subject to dialectal variation throughout Japan, resulting in forms such as や ya (in Kansai) and じゃ ja (in Hiroshima
Hiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, the largest island of Japan. It became best known as the first city in history to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon when the United States Army Air Forces dropped an atomic bomb on it at 8:15 A.M...
).
Japanese also has two verbs corresponding to English "to be": aru and iru. They are not copulae but existential verbs. Aru is used for inanimate objects, including plants, whereas iru is used for animate things like people, animals, and robots, though there are exceptions to this generalization.
| 本はテーブルにある。 | Hon wa tēburu ni aru. | "The book is on a table." |
| キムさんはここにいる。 | Kimu-san wa koko ni iru. | "Kim is here." |
Japanese people, when learning English, usually drop the auxiliary verbs "be" and "do" due to believing incorrectly that "be" is a semantically empty copula equivalent to "desu" and "da".
Korean
For sentences with predicate nominatives, the copula "이다" (i-da) is added to the predicate nominative (with no space in between).| 바나나는 과일이다. | Ba-na-na-neun gwa-il-i-da.. | "Bananas are a fruit." |
Predicate Adjectives can be handled in at least three ways. In all three ways, the adjective and verb are connected as one word.
1. With the copula "이다":
| 바나나는 노란색이다. | ba-na-na-neun no-ran-saek-i-da.. | "Bananas are yellow." |
2. With the verb "하다" (ha-da):
| 저는 행복하다. | Jeo-neun haeng-bok-ha-da.. | "I am happy." |
3. With stative verbs:
| 저는 예쁘다. | Jeo-neun yeh-bbeu-da.. | "I am pretty." |
Some English descriptions do not use the copula in Korean. For example, instead of saying "Ice cream is delicious", Koreans commonly say "Ice cream has flavor" (With has-flavor often combined into one word, but sometimes not).
| 아이스크림는 맛있다. | A-i-seu-keu-rim-neun mat-it-da.. | "Ice cream has-flavor" (Ice cream is delicious) |
| 아이스크림는 맛이 있다. | A-i-seu-keu-rim-neun mat-i it-da.. | "Ice cream has flavor" (Ice cream is delicious) |
The opposite, ice cream is gross, uses the Korean word "없다" (eopt-da), meaning "to not have".
| 아이스크림는 맛없다. | A-i-seu-keu-rim-neun mat-eopt-da.. | "Ice cream [doesn't have]-flavor" |
| 아이스크림는 맛이 없다. | A-i-seu-keu-rim-neun mat-i eopt-da.. | "Ice cream [doesn't have] flavor" |
Chinese
N.B. The characters used are simplified ones, and the transcriptions given in italics reflect Standard ChineseStandard Chinese
Standard Chinese, or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
pronunciation, using the Pinyin
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
system.
In Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
languages, both states and qualities are, in general, expressed with stative verb
Stative verb
A stative verb is one that asserts that one of its arguments has a particular property . Statives differ from other aspectual classes of verbs in that they are static; that is, they have undefined duration...
s (SV) with no need for a copula, e.g., in Mandarin, "to be tired" (累 lèi), "to be hungry" (饿 è), "to be located at" (在 zài), "to be stupid" (笨 bèn) and so forth. These verbs are usually preceded by an adverb such as 很 hěn ("very") or 不 bù ("not"). A sentence could also simply use a pronoun and a verb: for example, 我饿。 wǒ è. "I am hungry."
Only sentences with a noun as the complement (e.g., "this is my sister") use the verb "to be": 是 shì. This is used frequently: For example, instead of having a verb meaning "to be Chinese", the usual expression is "to be a Chinese person", using 是 shì. Some scholars call this verb form an equative verb (EV), as published in some Yale Chinese textbooks.
The history of the Chinese copula 是 is a controversial subject. Before the Han Dynasty
Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin Dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms . It was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han. It was briefly interrupted by the Xin Dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang...
, the character served as a demonstrative pronoun meaning "this" (this usage survives in some idioms and proverbs, as well as in Japanese). Some linguists argue that 是 developed into a copula because it often appeared, as a repetitive subject, after the subject of a sentence (in classical Chinese
Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of 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). Other scholars do not completely accept the explanation, proposing that 是 served as a demonstrative pronoun and a copula at the same time in ancient Chinese. Etymologically
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
, 是 developed from the meaning of "straight"; in modern Chinese, however, it can be combined with the modifier 的 de to mean "yes" or to show agreement.
e.g. Question: 你的汽车是不是红色的？ nǐ de qìchē shì bú shì hóngsè de? "Is your car red or not?"
Response: 是的。 shì de. "Is.", meaning "Yes.", or 不是。 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, which drops the modifier 的 de; the corresponding negative answer is 不对 bú duì, "Not right."
In Hokkien
Hokkien
Hokkien is a Hokkien word corresponding to Standard Chinese "Fujian". It may refer to:* Hokkien dialect, a dialect of Min Nan Chinese spoken in Southern Fujian , Taiwan, South-east Asia, and elsewhere....
是 sī acts as the copula, and 是 /z/ is the equivalent in Wu Chinese. Cantonese
Cantonese
Cantonese is a dialect spoken primarily in south China.Cantonese may also refer to:* Yue Chinese, the Chinese language that includes Cantonese* Cantonese cuisine, the cuisine of Guangdong province...
uses 係 (Jyutping
Jyutping
Jyutping is a romanization system for Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong in 1993. Its formal name is The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanization Scheme...
: hai6) instead of 是; similarly, Hakka uses 係 he55.
Siouan languages
In Siouan languages like LakotaLakota language
Lakota is a Siouan language spoken by the Lakota people of the Sioux tribes. While generally taught and considered by speakers as a separate language, Lakota is mutually understandable with the other two languages , and is considered by most linguists one of the three major varieties of the Sioux...
, in principle almost all words — according to their structure — are verbs. So, not very unlike in Lojban (see below), not only (transitive, intransitive and so-called 'stative') verbs but even nouns often behave like verbs and do not need to have copulae.
For example, the word wičháša refers to a man, and the verb "to-be-a-man" is expressed as wimáčhaša/winíčhaša/wičháša (I am/you are/he is a man). Yet there also is a copula héčha (to be a ...) that in most cases is used: wičháša hemáčha/heníčha/héčha (I am/you are/he is a man).
In order to express the statement "I am a doctor of profession," one has to say pezuta wičháša hemáčha. But, in order to express that that person is THE doctor (say, that had been phoned to help), one must use another copula iyé (to be the one): pežúta wičháša (kiŋ) miyé yeló (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., yaŋkÁ (lit.: to sit) for humans, or háŋ/hé (to stand upright) for inanimate objects of a certain shape. "Robert is in the house" could be translated as Robert thimáhel yaŋké (yeló), whereas "there's one restaurant next to the gas station" translates as "owótethipi wígli-oínažiŋ kiŋ hél isákhib waŋ hé".
Constructed languages
The constructed languageConstructed language
A planned or constructed language—known colloquially as a conlang—is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary has been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally...
Lojban
Lojban
See also discussed by Arthur Protin, Bob LeChevalier, Carl Burke, Doug Landauer, Guy Steele, Jack Waugh, Jeff Prothero, Jim Carter, and Robert Chassell, as well as , the concepts which "average English speakers won't recognize" because most of them "have no exact English counterpart".Like most...
has copulae, but they are rarely used, and are sometimes viewed with distaste in the Lojban community, because all words that express a predicate can be used as verbs. The three sentences "Bob runs", "Bob is old", and "Bob is a fireman", for instance, would all have the same form in Lojban: la bob. bajra, la bob. tolcitno, and la bob. fagdirpre. There are several different copulae: me turns whatever follows the word me into a verb that means to be what it follows. For example, me la bob. means to be Bob. Another copula is du, which is a verb that means all its arguments are the same thing (equal).
The E-Prime
E-Prime
E-Prime is a version of the English language that excludes all forms of the verb to be. E-Prime does not allow conjugations of to be , archaic forms E-Prime (short for English-Prime, sometimes denoted E′) is a version of the English language that excludes all forms of the verb to be. E-Prime does...
language, based on English, simply avoids the issue by not having a generic copula. It requires instead a specific form such as "remains", "becomes", "lies", or "equals".
Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
uses the copula much as English. The infinitive is esti, and the whole conjugation is regular (as with all Esperanto verbs). In addition, adjectival roots can be turned into stative verbs: La ĉielo bluas. "The sky is blue."
Likewise, Ido
Ido
Ido is a constructed language created with the goal of becoming a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds as a language easier to learn than ethnic languages...
has a copula that works as English "to be". Its infinitive is esar, and, as is the case in Esperanto, all of its forms are regular: The simple present is esas for all persons; the simple past is esis, the simple future is esos, and the imperative is esez, among a few more forms. However, Ido also has an alternative irregular form for the simple present ("es"), which some Idists frown upon. The possibility to turn adjectives and even nouns into verbs also exist, although this is mostly done by means of an affix, on top of the verbal endings. The affix is "-es-". So, "The sky is blue." can be said as "La cielo bluesas". As can be seen, the suffix "-es-" plus the verbal desinence "-as" are simply the verb "to be" annexed to the adjectival or nominal root.
Interlingua
Interlingua
Interlingua is an international auxiliary language , developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association...
speakers use copulae with the same freedom as speakers of Slavic, Germanic, and Romance languages. In addition to combinations with esser ('to be'), expressions such as cader prede ('to fall prey') are common. Esser is stated, rather than omitted as in Russian.
Existential usage
The existential usage of "to be" is distinct from and yet, in some languages, intimately related to its copulative usage. In language as opposed to formal logic, existence is a predicate rather than a quantifier, and the passage from copulative to existential usage can be subtle. In modern linguistics, one commonly speaks of existential constructions - prototypically involving an expletiveSyntactic expletive
Syntactic expletives are words that perform a syntactic role but contribute nothing to meaning. Expletive subjects are part of the grammar of many non-pro-drop languages such as English, whose clauses normally require overt provision of subject even when the subject can be pragmatically inferred...
like there - rather than existential use of the verb itself. So, for example in English, a sentence like "there is a problem" would be considered an instance of existential construction. Relying on unified theory of copular sentences, it has been proposed that there-sentences are subtypes of inverse copular sentences (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).
For example:
- Arabic: يمكنه أنّ يبدو أنّ يكون ذكياً – Yumkinuhu ʼan yabdu ʼan yakūna ḏakiyyan. — He can appear (to be) smart.
- Japanese: 吾輩は猫である。名前はまだない。 Wagahai wa neko de aru. Namae wa mada nai – I am a catI Am a Catis a satirical novel written in 1905–1906 by Natsume Sōseki, about Japanese society during the Meiji Period; particularly, the uneasy mix of Western culture and Japanese traditions, and the aping of Western customs....
. As yet, I have no name. — Natsume SōsekiNatsume Soseki, born ', is widely considered to be the foremost Japanese novelist of the Meiji period . He is best known for his novels Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat and his unfinished work Light and Darkness. He was also a scholar of British literature and composer of haiku, Chinese-style poetry, and fairy tales... - English: To be or not to be, that is the question. — William ShakespeareWilliam ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
- English: [Why climb Mount Everest?] Because it is there. — George MalloryGeorge MalloryGeorge Herbert Leigh Mallory was an English mountaineer who took part in the first three British expeditions to Mount Everest in the early 1920s....
- Hebrew: אהיה אשר אהיהI Am that I AmI Am that I Am is a common English translation of the response God used in the Hebrew Bible when Moses asked for His name . It is one of the most famous verses in the Torah...
Ehyeh asher ehyeh. – I am that I am. — Exodus 3:14. - Russian: Страна, которую ищут дети, есть. – Strana, kotoroju iščut deti,
jest' . – The country, which children are looking for, exists. — Mikhail PrishvinMikhail PrishvinMikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin was a Russian/Soviet writer.Mikhail Prishvin was born in the family mansion of Krutschevo, near the city of Yelets in what is now Lipetsk Oblast into the family of a merchant. In 1893-1897, he studied at a polytechnic school in Riga and was once arrested for his... - French: Je pense, donc je suis. – I think; therefore, I am. — Descartes
- Latin: Cogito ergo sumCogito ergo sumis a philosophical Latin statement proposed by . The simple meaning of the phrase is that someone wondering whether or not they exist is, in and of itself, proof that something, an "I", exists to do the thinking — However this "I" is not the more or less permanent person we call "I"...
. – I think; therefore, I am. — Descartes - Hungarian: Gondolkodom, tehát vagyok. – I think; therefore, I am. — Descartes
- Turkish: Düşünüyorum, öyleyse varım. – I think; therefore, I am. — Descartes
- Finnish: Ajattelen, siis olen. – I think; therefore, I am. — Descartes
- Filipino/Tagalog: Ang kahalagahan ng pagiging seryoso. – The importance of being Earnest. — Oscar WildeOscar WildeOscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
Other languages prefer to keep the existential usage entirely separate from the copula. Swedish, for example, reserves vara (to be) for the copula, keeping bli (to become) and finnas (to exist, lit. to be found) for becoming and existing, respectively.
- Swedish: Vem vill bli miljonär? – Who wants to be a millionaire?. (Literally "Who wants to become millionaire?") — Bengt MagnussonBengt Magnusson-External links:...
- Swedish: Varför bestiga Mt. Everest? Därför att det finns där. – Why climb Mt. Everest? Because it is there. (Literally "Why climb Mt. Everest? Because it is found there") — George MalloryGeorge MalloryGeorge Herbert Leigh Mallory was an English mountaineer who took part in the first three British expeditions to Mount Everest in the early 1920s....
In Spanish, ser (to be) is the copula, and estar (to be, to remain) and existir (to exist) are for being in a place and existing, respectively.
- Spanish: Pienso, luego existo. – I think; therefore, I am. — Descartes
In ontology
Ontology
Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...
, philosophical discussions of the word "be" and its conjugations takes place over the meaning of the word is, the third person singular form of 'be', and whether the other senses can be reduced
Reduction (philosophy)
In philosophy, reduction is the process by which one object, property, concept, theory, etc., is shown to be explicable in terms of another, lower level, entity...
to one sense. For example, it is sometimes suggested that the "is" of existence is reducible to the "is" of property attribution or class membership; to be, Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
held, is to be something. Of course, the gerund form of "be", being, is its own (vexed) topic: see being
Being
Being , is an English word used for conceptualizing subjective and objective aspects of reality, including those fundamental to the self —related to and somewhat interchangeable with terms like "existence" and "living".In its objective usage —as in "a being," or "[a] human being" —it...
and existence
Existence
In common usage, existence is the world we are aware of through our senses, and that persists independently without them. In academic philosophy the word has a more specialized meaning, being contrasted with essence, which specifies different forms of existence as well as different identity...
.
Unified theory of copular sentences
Along with canonical copular constructions wherein the canonical order of predication is displayed - that is, the subjectSubject (grammar)
The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
precedes the predicate
Predicate (grammar)
There are two competing notions of the predicate in theories of grammar. Traditional grammar tends to view a predicate as one of two main parts of a sentence, the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies. The other understanding of predicates is inspired from work in predicate calculus...
- as in "a picture of the wall is the cause of the riot," there can also be a symmetric type wherein the order of the two noun phrases is mirrored as in "the cause of the riot is a picture of the wall" (cf. Everaert et al. 2006). Although these two sentences are superficially very similar, it can be shown that they embody very different properties. So, for example, it is possible to form a sentence like "which riot do you think that a picture of the wall is the cause of" but not "*which wall do you think that the cause of the riot was a picture of". The distinction between these two types of sentences, in the technical sense referred to as "canonical" vs. inverse copula
Inverse copula
- The unified theory of copular sentences :Copular sentences are sentences containing the copula. A copular sentence may contain a noun phrase, the copula and another phrase. A subfield of research which has been particularly studied is the case of the copula cooccurring with two noun phrases...
r sentences, respectively - and the unified theory of copular sentences associated to it - has been proven to be valid across-languages and has led to some refinement of the theory of clause structure. In particular, it challenges one of the major dogmas of the theory of clause structure, i.e., that the two basic constituents of a sentence Noun Phrase and Verb Phrase are associated to the logical/grammatical functions of subject and predicate (cf. phrase structure rules
Phrase structure rules
Phrase-structure rules are a way to describe a given language's syntax. They are used to break down a natural language sentence into its constituent parts namely phrasal categories and lexical categories...
and sentence (linguistics)
Sentence (linguistics)
In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it...
).
This perspective has been argued against on empirical grounds, since the Noun Phrase
Noun phrase
In grammar, a noun phrase, nominal phrase, or nominal group is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like word optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives....
that cooccurs with the Verb Phrase
Verb phrase
In linguistics, a verb phrase or VP is a syntactic unit composed of at least one verb and the dependents of that verb. One can distinguish between two types of VPs, finite VPs and non-finite VPs . While phrase structure grammars acknowledge both, dependency grammars reject the existence of a...
in a copular sentence can be the predicate and the subject be contained in the Verb Phrase. It has been suggested that inverse copular sentences appear to play a sharp role in setting the pro-drop parameter. In Italian, for example, in sentences of the type Noun Phrase verb Noun Phrase, the verb, in general, agrees with the Noun Phrase on the left with one exception: inverse copular sentences. One can construe minimal pairs like the cause of the riot is/*are these pictures of the wall vs. la causa della rivolta sono/*è queste foto del muro: The two sentences are one the gloss of the other with only one difference: The copula is singular in Italian and plural in English. If one does not want to give up the idea that agreement is on the left, then the only option is to assume that pro occurs between the copula and the Noun Phrase on the left. That pro can occur as a predicate must be in fact independently assumed to assign a proper structure to sentences like sono io (am I: "it's me"), which can by no means be considered a transformation of *io sono, which has no meaning.
See also
- List of English copulae
- Nominal sentenceNominal sentenceThe term nominal sentence can refer to two different phenomena:* a sentence with a predicate consisting of the copula to be plus a predicative, like Bob is a postman.* a sentence with a predicate lacking a finite verb, like The more – the merrier...
- Predicate (grammar)Predicate (grammar)There are two competing notions of the predicate in theories of grammar. Traditional grammar tends to view a predicate as one of two main parts of a sentence, the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies. The other understanding of predicates is inspired from work in predicate calculus...
- Stative verbStative verbA stative verb is one that asserts that one of its arguments has a particular property . Statives differ from other aspectual classes of verbs in that they are static; that is, they have undefined duration...
- VerbVerbA verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...