Zero copula
Encyclopedia
Zero copula is a linguistic phenomenon whereby the subject is joined to the predicate without overt marking of this relationship (like the copula 'to be' in English). One can distinguish languages that simply do not have a copula and languages that have a copula that is optional in some contexts.
Bengali
, Malay
/Indonesian
, Turkish
, Russian
, Hungarian
, Hebrew
, Arabic
, Ganda and Sinhala exhibit this phenomenon.
Dropping the copula is also found, to a lesser extent, in English
and many other languages, used most frequently in rhetoric
and casual speech.
The zero copula is far more productive in Caribbean creoles and African American Vernacular English
, some varieties of which regularly omit the copula. For instance, "You crazy!", "Where you at?" and "Who she?" As in Russian, this is the case only in the present tense. In past-tense sentences, the copula must be specified. Although these speech patterns have not, as yet, had a significant effect on mainstream English, they are interesting for historical linguists
, as they may predict future developments in English grammar.
The zero copula is also present, in a slightly different and more regular form, in the headline
s of English newspaper
s, where short words and articles are generally omitted to conserve space. For example, a headline would more likely say "Gulf coast in ruins" than "Gulf coast is in ruins". Because headlines are generally simple A = B statements, an explicit copula is rarely necessary.
Another example of a dropped copula occurs in certain dialects, often in the form of "need + past participle". If something is broken, one may say "it needs fixed," rather than "it needs to be fixed." An extension of this can be seen in such phrases as "the house needs cleaning," where the verb acting as a noun in the gerund. A rarer example would be "The groceries need bringing into the house," as opposed to "The groceries need brought into the house," or "The groceries need to be brought into the house," in which case the gerund is less abstract and refers instead to the transitive nature of the verb.
and use of the copula.
the copula быть (byt) is normally omitted in the present tense
, but not in the past tense
:
Present (omitted):
Past (used):
The third person plural "суть" (sut’) ("are") is still used in some standard phrases, but since it is a homonym of the noun "essence", most native speakers do not notice it to be a verb:
The verb "быть" (byt’) is the infinitive of "to be". The third person singular, "есть" (yest’) means "is" (and, interestingly enough, it is a homophone of the infinitive "to eat"). As a copula, it can be inflected into the past ("был", byl), future ("будет", budet), and subjunctive ("был" or "бы", byl or by) forms. A present tense ("есть", yest’) exists; however, it is almost never used as a copula, but rather omitted altogether or replaced by the verb "являться" (yavlyat'sa) (to be in essence). Thus one can say:
But not usually:
The present tense of the copula in Russian was in common use well into the 19th Century (as attested in the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky) but is now used only for archaic
effect.
, Turkish
expresses "to be" not as a regular verb, but as an auxiliary verb denoted as i-mek, which shows its existence only through suffixes to predicates that can be nouns, adjectives or arguably conjugated verb stems. In the third person singular, zero copula is the rule, as in Hungarian or Russian. For example:
The essential copula is possible in third person singular:
In Tatar
, dir expresses doubt rather than a characteristic. The origin of dir is the verb durmak, with a similar meaning to the Latin stare.
, the use of the zero copula again depends on the context. In the present tense affirmative, when the subject is definite and the predicate is indefinite
, the subject is simply juxtaposed with its predicate. When both the subject and the predicate are definite, a pronoun
(agreeing with the subject) must be inserted between the two. For example:
The extra pronoun is needed to prevent the adjective qualifying the noun attributively:
(This is just a noun phrase
with no copula. See al-
for more on the use of definite and indefinite nouns in Arabic and how it affects the copula.)
In the past tense, however, or in the present tense negative, the verbs kāna and laysa are used, which take the accusative case
:
When the copula is expressed with a verb, no pronoun need be inserted, regardless of the definiteness of the predicate:
Otherwise, the zero copula is used:
Here the word mulungi 'beautiful' is missing its initial vowel pre-prefix o-. If included, it would make the adjective qualify the noun omuwala attributively:
does not have a copula. For example, my hair is wet is signed 'my hair wet', and my name is Pete may be signed '[name my]TOPIC P-E-T-E'.
often requires the use of a predicative particle to denote non-definite predicates means that the copula can be omitted in certain phrases. For example, the phrase Ac yntau'n ddyn byr... ("Since he is/was/etc. a short man...") literally translates as "And he [particle] a short man...". The zero copula is especially common in Welsh poetry of the gogynfardd
style.
, as well as some other Amerindian languages, has no copula. Instead of using a copula, it is possible to conjugate
nouns or adjectives like verbs.
Grammarians and other comparative linguists, however, do not consider this to constitute a zero copula but rather an affix
a copula. Affixal copulae are not unique to Amerindian languages but can be found, for instance, in Korean
and in the Eskimo languages.
Many indigenous languages of South America do, however, have true zero copulae in which no overt free or bound morpheme
is present when one noun is equated with another.
, the category "copula" must not be postulated then.
Application of the term zero copula to languages entirely lacking the copula is normally done because the translational equivalent would have a copula in English. There is theoretical disagreement on whether this can be considered good practice.
Bengali
Bengali language
Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
, Malay
Malay language
Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...
/Indonesian
Indonesian language
Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a normative form of the Riau Islands dialect of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries....
, Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
, Russian
Russian 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....
, 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...
, 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...
, Ganda and Sinhala exhibit this phenomenon.
Dropping the copula is also found, to a lesser extent, in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and many other languages, used most frequently in rhetoric
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
and casual speech.
In English
Standard English exhibits a very limited form of the zero copula, most common in statements like "The higher, the better," and casual questions like "You from out of town?". However, the zero copula is not used productively in standard English.The zero copula is far more productive in Caribbean creoles and African American Vernacular English
African 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...
, some varieties of which regularly omit the copula. For instance, "You crazy!", "Where you at?" and "Who she?" As in Russian, this is the case only in the present tense. In past-tense sentences, the copula must be specified. Although these speech patterns have not, as yet, had a significant effect on mainstream English, they are interesting for historical linguists
Historical linguistics
Historical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...
, as they may predict future developments in English grammar.
The zero copula is also present, in a slightly different and more regular form, in the headline
Headline
The headline is the text at the top of a newspaper article, indicating the nature of the article below it.It is sometimes termed a news hed, a deliberate misspelling that dates from production flow during hot type days, to notify the composing room that a written note from an editor concerned a...
s of English newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
s, where short words and articles are generally omitted to conserve space. For example, a headline would more likely say "Gulf coast in ruins" than "Gulf coast is in ruins". Because headlines are generally simple A = B statements, an explicit copula is rarely necessary.
Another example of a dropped copula occurs in certain dialects, often in the form of "need + past participle". If something is broken, one may say "it needs fixed," rather than "it needs to be fixed." An extension of this can be seen in such phrases as "the house needs cleaning," where the verb acting as a noun in the gerund. A rarer example would be "The groceries need bringing into the house," as opposed to "The groceries need brought into the house," or "The groceries need to be brought into the house," in which case the gerund is less abstract and refers instead to the transitive nature of the verb.
In other languages
Omission frequently depends on the tenseGrammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
and use of the copula.
Russian
In 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...
the copula быть (byt) is normally omitted in the present tense
Present tense
The present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...
, but not in the past tense
Past tense
The past tense is a grammatical tense that places an action or situation in the past of the current moment , or prior to some specified time that may be in the speaker's past, present, or future...
:
Present (omitted):
- Она дома (Ona domа) = She at home, literally "She is now at home, in the house"
Past (used):
- Она была дома (Ona byla domа) = She was at home
The third person plural "суть" (sut’) ("are") is still used in some standard phrases, but since it is a homonym of the noun "essence", most native speakers do not notice it to be a verb:
- Они суть одно и то же (Oni sut’ odno i to zhe) — "they are one and the same".
The verb "быть" (byt’) is the infinitive of "to be". The third person singular, "есть" (yest’) means "is" (and, interestingly enough, it is a homophone of the infinitive "to eat"). As a copula, it can be inflected into the past ("был", byl), future ("будет", budet), and subjunctive ("был" or "бы", byl or by) forms. A present tense ("есть", yest’) exists; however, it is almost never used as a copula, but rather omitted altogether or replaced by the verb "являться" (yavlyat'sa) (to be in essence). Thus one can say:
- Она была красавицей (Ona byla krasavitsej) — "she was a beautiful woman" (adjective in instrumental caseInstrumental caseThe 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...
). - Она красавица (Ona krasavitsa) — "she is a beautiful woman" (adjective in the nominative caseNominative caseThe 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...
). - Она является красавицей (Ona yavlyayetsya krasavitsej) — "she is a beautiful woman" (adjective also in instrumental).
But not usually:
- Она есть красавица (Ona yest’ krasavitsa) — "she is a beautiful woman".
The present tense of the copula in Russian was in common use well into the 19th Century (as attested in the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky) but is now used only for archaic
Archaism
In language, an archaism is the use of a form of speech or writing that is no longer current. This can either be done deliberately or as part of a specific jargon or formula...
effect.
Turkic languages
Being an extremely regular agglutinative languageAgglutinative language
An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view...
, Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
expresses "to be" not as a regular verb, but as an auxiliary verb denoted as i-mek, which shows its existence only through suffixes to predicates that can be nouns, adjectives or arguably conjugated verb stems. In the third person singular, zero copula is the rule, as in Hungarian or Russian. For example:
| Deniz mavi. | "[The] sea [is] blue." | (the auxiliary verb i-mek is implied only); |
| Ben maviyim. | "I am blue." | (the auxiliary verb i-mek appears in (y)im.) |
The essential copula is possible in third person singular:
| Deniz mavidir. | "[The] sea is (always, characteristically) blue." |
In Tatar
Tatar language
The Tatar language , or more specifically Kazan Tatar, is a Turkic language spoken by the Tatars of historical Kazan Khanate, including modern Tatarstan and Bashkiria...
, dir expresses doubt rather than a characteristic. The origin of dir is the verb durmak, with a similar meaning to the Latin stare.
Arabic
In ArabicArabic 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...
, the use of the zero copula again depends on the context. In the present tense affirmative, when the subject is definite and the predicate is indefinite
Indefinite
Indefinite may refer to:*In mathematics:**When talking about positive or negative indefinite forms in multilinear algebra, see definite bilinear form.**"Indefinite integral" refers to the antiderivative....
, the subject is simply juxtaposed with its predicate. When both the subject and the predicate are definite, a 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...
(agreeing with the subject) must be inserted between the two. For example:
- محمد مهندس (Muḥammad muhandis) = 'Muhammad is an engineer' (lit. 'Muhammad an-engineer')
- محمد هو المهندس (Muḥammad huwa'l-muhandis) = 'Muhammad is the engineer' (lit. 'Muhammad he the-engineer')
The extra pronoun is needed to prevent the adjective qualifying the noun attributively:
- محمد المهندس (Muḥammad al-muhandis) = 'Muhammad the engineer'
(This is just a 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....
with no copula. See al-
Al-
is the definite article in the Arabic language; a particle whose function is to render the noun on which it is prefixed definite. For example, the word kitāb 'book' can be made definite by prefixing it with al-, resulting in al-kitāb 'the book'...
for more on the use of definite and indefinite nouns in Arabic and how it affects the copula.)
In the past tense, however, or in the present tense negative, the verbs kāna and laysa are used, which take the accusative case
Accusative case
The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
:
- كان محمد مهندسًا (Kāna Muḥammad muhandisan) = 'Muhammad was an engineer' (kāna = '(he) was') (literally 'he-was Muhammad an-engineer')
- ليس محمد مهندسًا (Laysa Muḥammad muhandisan) = 'Muhammad is not an engineer' (lit. 'he-isn't Muhammad an-engineer'; the -an suffix marks the indefinite accusative)
When the copula is expressed with a verb, no pronoun need be inserted, regardless of the definiteness of the predicate:
- ليس محمد المهندس (Laysa Muḥammad al-muhandis) = 'Muhammad is not the engineer' (lit. 'he-isn't Muhammad the-engineer')
Ganda
The Ganda verb 'to be', -li is used in only two cases: when the predicate is a prepositional phrase and when the subject is a pronoun and the predicate is an adjective:- Ali mulungi 'She is beautiful' (ali = '(he/she) is')
- Kintu ali mu emmotoka 'Kintu is in the car' (literally 'Kintu he-is in-car')
Otherwise, the zero copula is used:
- Omuwala mulungi 'The girl is beautiful' (literally 'the-girl beautiful')
Here the word mulungi 'beautiful' is missing its initial vowel pre-prefix o-. If included, it would make the adjective qualify the noun omuwala attributively:
- Omuwala omulungi 'The beautiful girl' or 'a beautiful girl'
American Sign Language
American Sign LanguageAmerican Sign Language
American Sign Language, or ASL, for a time also called Ameslan, is the dominant sign language of Deaf Americans, including deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico...
does not have a copula. For example, my hair is wet is signed 'my hair wet', and my name is Pete may be signed '[name my]TOPIC P-E-T-E'.
Irish
The copula is is used in Irish but may be omitted in the present tense. For example, Is fear mór é ("He is a big man") can be expressed as simply Fear mór é. The common phrase Pé scéal é (meaning "anyhow", lit. "Whatever story [it] is") also omits the copula.Welsh
The fact that WelshWelsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
often requires the use of a predicative particle to denote non-definite predicates means that the copula can be omitted in certain phrases. For example, the phrase Ac yntau'n ddyn byr... ("Since he is/was/etc. a short man...") literally translates as "And he [particle] a short man...". The zero copula is especially common in Welsh poetry of the gogynfardd
Medieval Welsh literature
Medieval Welsh literature is the literature written in the Welsh language during the Middle Ages. This includes material from the fifth century, when Welsh was in the process of becoming distinct from the British language, to the works of the 16th century....
style.
Amerindian languages
NahuatlNahuatl
Nahuatl is thought to mean "a good, clear sound" This language name has several spellings, among them náhuatl , Naoatl, Nauatl, Nahuatl, Nawatl. In a back formation from the name of the language, the ethnic group of Nahuatl speakers are called Nahua...
, as well as some other Amerindian languages, has no copula. Instead of using a copula, it is possible to conjugate
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...
nouns or adjectives like verbs.
Grammarians and other comparative linguists, however, do not consider this to constitute a zero copula but rather an affix
Affix
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes...
a copula. Affixal copulae are not unique to Amerindian languages but can be found, for instance, in Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
and in the Eskimo languages.
Many indigenous languages of South America do, however, have true zero copulae in which no overt free or bound morpheme
Morpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
is present when one noun is equated with another.
Empirical problems
Some languages can be said to have a zero-copula, used in some contexts, which alternates with an overt copula, which is used in other contexts. Other languages lack an overt copula altogether, and no clause could possibly have a copula. In the latter languages, the postulation of a zero copula is empirically problematic, because there is no language-internal evidence for the category copula. According to Occam's razorOccam's razor
Occam's razor, also known as Ockham's razor, and sometimes expressed in Latin as lex parsimoniae , is a principle that generally recommends from among competing hypotheses selecting the one that makes the fewest new assumptions.-Overview:The principle is often summarized as "simpler explanations...
, the category "copula" must not be postulated then.
Application of the term zero copula to languages entirely lacking the copula is normally done because the translational equivalent would have a copula in English. There is theoretical disagreement on whether this can be considered good practice.
Literature
- Wolfram, Walter (1969) A Sociolinguistic Description of Detroit Negro Speech. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics p. 165-179