In
linguistics, a copula (plural: copulas or copulae;
abbreviated ) is a word or phrase that links the
subject
Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to:
Philosophy
*''Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing
**Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective cons ...
of a
sentence to a
subject complement In grammar, a subject complement or predicative of the subject is a predicative expression that follows a linking verb ( copula) and that complements the subject of the sentence by either (1) renaming it or (2) describing it. It completes the mea ...
, such as the word ''is'' in the sentence "The sky is blue" or the phrase ''was not being'' in the sentence "It was not being co-operative." The word ''copula'' derives from the
Latin noun for a "link" or "tie" that connects two different things.
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
Primary education or elementary education is typically the first stage of formal education, coming after preschool/kindergarten and before secondary school. Primary education takes place in ''primary schools'', ''elementary schools'', or first ...
grammar courses, a copula is often called a
linking verb
In traditional grammar and guide books, a linking verb is a verb that describes the subject by connecting it to a predicate adjective or predicate noun (collectively known as subject complements). Unlike the majority of verbs, they do not describ ...
. In other languages, copulas show more resemblances to
pronouns, as in
Classical Chinese and
Guarani, or may take the form of
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, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
es attached to a noun, as in
Korean,
Beja, and
Inuit languages.
Most languages have one main copula, although some (like
Spanish,
Portuguese and
Thai
Thai or THAI may refer to:
* Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia
** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand
** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand
*** Thai script
*** Thai (Unicode block ...
) have more than one, while others have
none
None may refer to:
*Zero, the mathematical concept of the quantity "none"
*Empty set, the mathematical concept of the collection of things represented by "none"
*''none'', an indefinite pronoun in the English language
Music
* ''None'' (Meshuggah E ...
. In the case of English, this is the verb ''to be''. While the term ''copula'' is generally used to refer to such principal verbs, it may also be used for a wider group of verbs with similar potential functions (like ''become'', ''get'', ''feel'' and ''seem'' in English); alternatively, these might be distinguished as "semi-copulas" or "pseudo-copulas".
Grammatical function
The principal use of a copula is to link the
subject
Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to:
Philosophy
*''Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing
**Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective cons ...
of a
clause
In language, a clause is a constituent that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject and a syntactic predicate, the latter typically a verb phrase composed of a verb with ...
to a
subject complement In grammar, a subject complement or predicative of the subject is a predicative expression that follows a linking verb ( copula) and that complements the subject of the sentence by either (1) renaming it or (2) describing it. It completes the mea ...
. A copular verb is often considered to be part of the
predicate, the remainder being called a
predicative expression
A predicative expression (or just predicative) is part of a clause predicate, and is an expression that typically follows a copula (or linking verb), e.g. ''be'', ''seem'', ''appear'', or that appears as a second complement of a certain type of v ...
. A simple clause containing a copula is illustrated below:
The book is on the table.
In that sentence, the
noun phrase ''the book'' is the subject, the verb ''is'' serves as the copula, and the
prepositional phrase ''on the table'' is the predicative expression. The whole expression ''is on the table'' may (in some theories of grammar) be called a predicate or a
verb phrase.
The predicative expression accompanying the copula, also known as the
complement of the copula, may take any of several possible forms: it may be a noun or noun phrase, an
adjective or adjective phrase, a prepositional phrase (as above) or an adverb or another adverbial phrase expressing time or location. Examples are given below (with the copula in bold and the predicative expression in italics):
The three components (subject, copula and predicative expression) do not necessarily appear in that order: their positioning depends on the rules for
word order applicable to the language in question. In English (an
SVO language), the ordering given above is the normal one, but certain variation is possible:
*In many questions and other clauses with
subject–auxiliary inversion
Subject–auxiliary inversion (SAI; also called subject–operator inversion) is a frequently occurring type of inversion in English, whereby a finite auxiliary verb – taken here to include finite forms of the copula ''be'' – appears to "inve ...
, the copula moves in front of the subject: ''Are you happy?''
*In
inverse copular constructions
In linguistics, inverse copular constructions, named after Moro (1997), are a type of inversion in English where canonical SCP word order (subject- copula- predicative expression, e.g. ''Fred is the plumber'') is reversed in a sense, so that one ap ...
(see below) the predicative expression precedes the copula, but the subject follows it: ''In the room were three men.''
It is also possible, in certain circumstances, for one (or even two) of the three components to be absent:
*In
null-subject (pro-drop) languages, the subject may be omitted, as it may from other types of sentence. In
Italian, means ‘I am tired’, literally ‘am tired’.
*In
non-finite clause
In linguistics, a non-finite clause is a dependent or embedded clause that represents a state or event in the same way no matter whether it takes place before, during, or after text production. In this sense, a non-finite dependent clause represe ...
s in languages like English, the subject is often absent, as in the
participial phrase ''being tired'' or the
infinitive phrase
Infinitive (abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all languages. The word is deri ...
''to be tired''. The same applies to most imperative sentences like ''Be good!''
*For cases in which no copula appears, see below.
*Any of the three components may be omitted as a result of various general types of
ellipsis. In particular, in English, the predicative expression may be elided in a construction similar to
verb phrase ellipsis, as in short sentences like ''I am''; ''Are they?'' (where the predicative expression is understood from the previous context).
Inverse copular constructions
In linguistics, inverse copular constructions, named after Moro (1997), are a type of inversion in English where canonical SCP word order (subject- copula- predicative expression, e.g. ''Fred is the plumber'') is reversed in a sense, so that one ap ...
, in which the positions of the predicative expression and the subject are reversed, are found in various languages. They have been the subject of much theoretical analysis, particularly in regard to the difficulty of maintaining, in the case of such sentences, the usual division into a subject
noun phrase and a predicate
verb phrase.
Another issue is
verb agreement when both subject and predicative expression are noun phrases (and differ in number or person): in English, the copula typically agrees with the syntactical subject even if it is not logically (i.e.
semantically
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...
) the subject, as in ''the cause of the riot is'' (not ''are'') ''these pictures of the wall''. Compare Italian ; notice the use of the plural to agree with plural "these photos" rather than with singular "the cause". In instances where an English syntactical subject comprises a prepositional object that is pluralized, however, the prepositional object agrees with the predicative expression, e.g. "What kind ''of birds are'' those?"
The definition and scope of the concept of a copula is not necessarily precise in any language. As noted above, though the concept of the copula in English is most strongly associated with the verb ''to be'', there are many other verbs that can be used in a copular sense as well.
* The boy became a man.
* The girl grew more excited as the holiday preparations intensified.
* The dog felt tired from the activity.
And more tenuously
* The milk turned sour.
* The food smells good.
* You seem upset.
Meanings
Predicates formed using a copula may express identity: that the two noun phrases (subject and complement) have the same
referent
A referent () is a person or thing to which a name – a linguistic expression or other symbol – refers. For example, in the sentence ''Mary saw me'', the referent of the word ''Mary'' is the particular person called Mary who is being spoken of, ...
or express an identical concept:
They may also express membership of a class or a
subset
In mathematics, Set (mathematics), set ''A'' is a subset of a set ''B'' if all Element (mathematics), elements of ''A'' are also elements of ''B''; ''B'' is then a superset of ''A''. It is possible for ''A'' and ''B'' to be equal; if they are ...
relationship:
Similarly they may express some property, relation or position, permanent or temporary:
Other special uses of copular verbs are described in some of the following sections.
Essence vs. state
Some languages use different copulas, or different syntax, to denote a permanent, essential characteristic of something versus a temporary state. For examples, see the sections on the
Romance languages,
Slavic languages and
Irish.
Forms
In many languages the principal copula is a
verb, like English ''(to) be'', German ,
Mixtec ,
Touareg
The Tuareg people (; also spelled Twareg or Touareg; endonym: ''Imuhaɣ/Imušaɣ/Imašeɣăn/Imajeɣăn'') are a large Berber ethnic group that principally inhabit the Sahara in a vast area stretching from far southwestern Libya to southern ...
''emous'',
etc. It may inflect for
grammatical categories
In linguistics, a grammatical category or grammatical feature is a property of items within the grammar of a language. Within each category there are two or more possible values (sometimes called grammemes), which are normally mutually exclusiv ...
like
tense,
aspect and
mood, like other verbs in the language. Being a very commonly used verb, it is likely that the copula has
irregular inflected forms; in English, the verb ''be'' has a number of highly irregular (
suppletive) forms and has more different inflected forms than any other English verb (''am'', ''is'', ''are'', ''was'', ''were'', etc.; see
English verbs for details).
Other copulas show more resemblances to
pronouns. That is the case for
Classical Chinese and
Guarani, for instance. In highly
synthetic language
A synthetic language uses inflection or agglutination to express Syntax, syntactic relationships within a sentence. Inflection is the addition of morphemes to a root word that assigns grammatical property to that word, while agglutination is the ...
s, copulas are often
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, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
es, attached to a noun, but they may still behave otherwise like ordinary verbs: in
Inuit languages.
In some other languages, like
Beja and
Ket
Kentucky Educational Television (KET) is a state network of PBS member television stations serving the U.S. Commonwealth of Kentucky. It is operated by the Kentucky Authority for Educational Television, an agency of the Kentucky state governm ...
, the copula takes the form of suffixes that attach to a noun but are distinct from the
person agreement markers used on
predicative verb
A predicative verb is a verb that behaves as a grammatical adjective; that is, it predicates (qualifies or informs about the properties of its argument). It is a special kind of stative verb.
Many languages do not use the present forms of the ver ...
s.
This phenomenon is known as ''
nonverbal person agreement'' (or ''nonverbal subject agreement''), and the relevant markers are always established as deriving from
clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a w ...
ized independent pronouns.
For cases in which the copula is omitted or takes
zero form, see below.
Additional uses of copular verbs
A copular verb may also have other uses supplementary to or distinct from its uses as a copula.
As auxiliary verbs
The English verb ''to be'' is also used as an
auxiliary verb, especially for expressing
passive voice (together with the
past participle
In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...
) or expressing
progressive aspect (together with the
present participle):
Other languages' copulas have additional uses as auxiliaries. For example, French can be used to express passive voice similarly to English ''be''; both French and German are used to express the
perfect forms of certain verbs (formerly English ''be'' was also):
The auxiliary functions of these verbs derived from their copular function, and could be interpreted as special cases of the copular function (with the verbal forms it precedes being considered adjectival).
Another auxiliary usage in English is (together with the
''to''-infinitive) to denote an obligatory action or expected occurrence: "I am to serve you;" "The manager is to resign." This can be put also into past tense: "We were to leave at 9." For forms like "if I was/were to come," see
English conditional sentences. (Note that, by certain criteria, the English copula ''be'' may always be considered an auxiliary verb; see
Diagnostics for identifying auxiliary verbs in English.)
Existential usage
The English ''to be'' and its equivalents in certain other languages also have a non-copular use as an existential verb, meaning "to exist." This use is illustrated in the following sentences: ''I want only to be, and that is enough''; ''
I think therefore I am''; ''
To be or not to be, that is the question.'' In these cases, the verb itself expresses a predicate (that of
existence), rather than linking to a predicative expression as it does when used as a copula. In
ontology it is sometimes suggested that the "is" of existence is reducible to the "is" of property attribution or class membership; to be,
Aristotle held, is to be ''something''. However,
Abelard in his ''Dialectica'' made a ''
reductio ad absurdum'' argument against the idea that the copula can express existence.
Similar examples can be found in many other languages; for example, the French and Latin equivalents of ''I think therefore I am'' are and , where and are the equivalents of English "am," normally used as copulas. However, other languages prefer a different verb for existential use, as in the Spanish version (where the verb "to exist" is used rather than the copula or ‘to be’).
Another type of existential usage is in clauses of the ''
there is…'' or ''there are…'' type. Languages differ in the way they express such meanings; some of them use the copular verb, possibly with an
expletive pronoun like the English ''there'', while other languages use different verbs and constructions, like the French (which uses parts of the verb ‘to have,’ not the copula) or the Swedish (the passive voice of the verb for "to find"). For details, see
existential clause.
Relying on a unified theory of copular sentences, it has been proposed that the English ''there''-sentences are subtypes of
inverse copular constructions.
Zero copula
In some languages, copula omission occurs within a particular grammatical context. For example, speakers of
Russian,
Indonesian
Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to:
* Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia
** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago
** Indonesian ...
,
Turkish
Turkish may refer to:
*a Turkic language spoken by the Turks
* of or about Turkey
** Turkish language
*** Turkish alphabet
** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation
*** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey
*** Turkish communities and mi ...
,
Hungarian,
Arabic,
Hebrew,
Geʽez and
Quechuan languages
Quechua (, ; ), usually called ("people's language") in Quechuan languages, is an indigenous language family spoken by the Quechua peoples, primarily living in the Peruvian Andes. Derived from a common ancestral language, it is the most widely ...
consistently drop the copula in present tense: Russian: , ‘I (am a) person;’ Indonesian: ‘I (am) a human;’ Turkish: ‘s/he (is a) human;’ Hungarian: ‘s/he (is) a human;’ Arabic: أنا إنسان, ‘I (am a) human;’ Hebrew: אני אדם, ''ʔani ʔadam'' "I (am a) human;" Geʽez: አነ ብእሲ/ብእሲ አነ ''ʔana bəʔəsi'' / ''bəʔəsi ʔana'' "I (am a) man" / "(a) man I (am)"; Southern Quechua: ''payqa runam'' "s/he (is) a human." The usage is known generically as the zero copula. Note that in other tenses (sometimes in forms other than third person singular), the copula usually reappears.
Some languages drop the copula in poetic or
aphorismic contexts. Examples in English include
* ''The more, the better.''
* ''Out of many, one.''
* ''True that.''
Such poetic copula dropping is more pronounced in some languages other than English, like the
Romance language
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European languages, I ...
s.
In informal speech of English, the copula may also be dropped in general sentences, as in "She a nurse." It is a feature of
African-American Vernacular English
African-American Vernacular English (AAVE, ), also referred to as Black (Vernacular) English, Black English Vernacular, or occasionally Ebonics (a colloquial, controversial term), is the variety of English natively spoken, particularly in urban ...
, but is also used by a variety of other English speakers in informal contexts. An example is the sentence "I saw twelve men, each a soldier."
Examples in specific languages
In Ancient Greek, when an adjective precedes a noun with an article, the copula is understood: , "the house is large," can be written , "large the house (is)."
In Quechua (
Southern Quechua used for the examples), zero copula is restricted to present tense in third person singular (''kan''): ''Payqa runam'' — "(s)he is a human;" but: ''(paykuna) runakunam kanku'' "(they) are human."ap
In
Māori
Māori or Maori can refer to:
Relating to the Māori people
* Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group
* Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand
* Māori culture
* Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the C ...
, the zero copula can be used in
predicative expression
A predicative expression (or just predicative) is part of a clause predicate, and is an expression that typically follows a copula (or linking verb), e.g. ''be'', ''seem'', ''appear'', or that appears as a second complement of a certain type of v ...
s and with continuous verbs (many of which take a copulative verb in many Indo-European languages) — ''He nui te whare'', literally "a big the house," "the house (is) big;" ''I te tēpu te pukapuka'', literally "at (past
locative
In grammar, the locative case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases, together with the ...
particle) the table the book," "the book (was) on the table;" ''Nō Ingarangi ia'', literally "from England (s)he," "(s)he (is) from England," ''Kei te kai au'', literally "at the (act of) eating I," "I (am) eating."
Alternatively, in many cases, the particle ''ko'' can be used as a copulative (though not all instances of ''ko'' are used as thus, like all other Maori particles, ''ko'' has multiple purposes): ''Ko nui te whare'' "The house is big;" ''Ko te pukapuka kei te tēpu'' "It is the book (that is) on the table;" ''Ko au kei te kai'' "It is me eating."
However, when expressing identity or class membership, ''ko'' must be used: ''Ko tēnei tāku pukapuka'' "This is my book;" ''Ko Ōtautahi he tāone i Te Waipounamu'' "Christchurch is a city in the South Island (of New Zealand);" ''Ko koe tōku hoa'' "You are my friend."
When expressing identity, ''ko'' can be placed on either object in the clause without changing the meaning (''ko tēnei tāku pukapuka'' is the same as ''ko tāku pukapuka tēnei'') but not on both (''ko tēnei ko tāku pukapuka'' would be equivalent to saying "it is this, it is my book" in English).
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 be omitted in colloquial language: ''hat óra (van)'', "it is six o'clock."
Hungarian uses copula ''lenni'' for expressing location: ''Itt van Róbert'' "Bob is here," but it is omitted in the third person present tense for attribution or identity statements: ''Róbert öreg'' "Bob is old;" ''ők éhesek'' "They are hungry;" ''Kati nyelvtudós'' "Cathy is a linguist" (but ''Róbert öreg volt'' "Bob was old," ''éhesek voltak'' "They were hungry," ''Kati nyelvtudós volt'' "Cathy was a linguist).
In Turkish, both the third person singular and the third person plural copulas are omittable. ''Ali burada'' and ''Ali buradadır'' both mean "Ali is here," and ''Onlar aç'' and ''Onlar açlar'' both mean "They are hungry." Both of the sentences are acceptable and grammatically correct, but sentences with the copula are more formal.
The Turkish first person singular copula suffix is omitted when introducing oneself. ''Bora ben'' (I am Bora) is grammatically correct, but "Bora benim" (same sentence with the copula) is not for an introduction (but is grammatically correct in other cases).
Further restrictions may apply before omission is permitted. For example, in the
Irish language
Irish ( Standard Irish: ), also known as Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was ...
, ''is'', the present tense of the copula, may be omitted when the
predicate is a noun. ''Ba'', the past/conditional, cannot be deleted. If the present copula is omitted, the pronoun (e.g., ''é, í, iad'') preceding the noun is omitted as well.
Additional copulas
Sometimes, the term ''copula'' is taken to include not only a language's equivalent(s) to the verb ''be'' but also other verbs or forms that serve to link a subject to a predicative expression (while adding
semantic
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...
content of their own). For example, English verbs like ''become'', ''get'', ''feel'', ''look'', ''taste'', ''smell'', and ''seem'' can have this function, as in the following sentences (the predicative expression, the complement of the verb, is in italics):
(This usage should be distinguished from the use of some of these verbs as "action" verbs, as in ''They look at the wall'', in which ''look'' denotes an action and cannot be replaced by the basic copula ''are''.)
Some verbs have rarer, secondary uses as copular verbs, like the verb ''fall'' in sentences like ''The zebra fell victim to the lion.''
These extra copulas are sometimes called "semi-copulas" or "pseudo-copulas." For a list of common verbs of this type in English, see
List of English copulae
This is a non-exhaustive list of copula (linguistics), copulae in the English language, i.e. words used to link the subject (grammar), subject of a sentence with a predicate (grammar), predicate (a subject complement).
Because many of these copu ...
.
In particular languages
Indo-European
In
Indo-European language
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch ...
s, the words meaning ''to be'' are sometimes similar to each other. Due to the high frequency of their use, their inflection retains a considerable degree of similarity in some cases. Thus, for example, the English form ''is'' is a
cognate
In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymology, etymological ancestor in a proto-language, common parent language. Because language c ...
of German ''ist'', Latin ''est'', Persian ''ast'' and Russian ''
jest''', even though the Germanic, Italic, Iranian and Slavic language groups split at least 3000 years ago. The origins of the copulas of most Indo-European languages can be traced back to four
Proto-Indo-European stems: ''*es-'' (''*h
1es-''), ''*sta-'' (''*steh
2-''), ''*wes-'' and ''*bhu-'' (''*bʰuH-'').
English
The English copular verb ''be'' has eight forms (more than any other English verb): ''be'', ''am'', ''is'', ''are'', ''being'', ''was'', ''were'', ''been''. Additional archaic forms include ''art'', ''wast'', ''wert'', and occasionally ''beest'' (as a
subjunctive
The subjunctive (also known as conjunctive in some languages) is a grammatical mood, a feature of the utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude towards it. Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unreality ...
). For more details see
English verbs. For the etymology of the various forms, see
Indo-European copula.
The main uses of the copula in English are described in the above sections. The possibility of copula omission is mentioned under .
A particular construction found in English (particularly in speech) is the use of
two successive copulas when only one appears necessary, as in ''My point is, is that...''. The acceptability of this construction is a
disputed matter in English prescriptive grammar.
The simple English copula "be" may on occasion be substituted by other verbs with near identical meanings.
Persian
In Persian, the verb ''to be'' can either take the form of ''ast'' (cognate to English ''is'') or ''budan'' (cognate to ''be'').
:
Hindustani
In
Hindustani
Hindustani may refer to:
* something of, from, or related to Hindustan (another name of India)
* Hindustani language, an Indo-Aryan language, whose two official norms are Hindi and Urdu
* Fiji Hindi, a variety of Eastern Hindi spoken in Fiji, and ...
(
Hindi and
Urdu), the copula होना ɦonɑ ہونا can be put into four grammatical aspects (simple, habitual, perfective, and progressive) and each of those four aspects can be put into five grammatical moods (indicative, presumptive, subjunctive, contrafactual, and imperative).
Some example sentences using the simple aspect are shown below:
Besides the verb होना honā (to be), there are three other verbs which can also be used as the copula, they are रहना rêhnā (to stay), जाना jānā (to go), and आना ānā (to come).
The following table shows the conjugations of the copula होना honā in the five grammatical moods in the simple aspect. The transliteration scheme used is
ISO 15919
ISO 15919 (Transliteration of Devanagari and related Indic scripts into Latin characters) is one of a series of international standards for romanization by the International Organization for Standardization. It was published in 2001 and uses dia ...
.
Romance
Copulas in the
Romance languages usually consist of two different verbs that can be translated as "to be," the main one from the Latin ''esse'' (via
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve ...
''essere''; ''esse'' deriving from ''*es-''), often referenced as ''sum'' (another of the Latin verb's
principal parts) and a secondary one from ''stare'' (from ''*sta-''), often referenced as ''sto''. The resulting distinction in the modern forms is found in all the
Iberian Romance languages
The Iberian Romance, Ibero-Romance or sometimes Iberian languagesIberian languages is also used as a more inclusive term for all languages spoken on the Iberian Peninsula, which in antiquity included the non-Indo-European Iberian language. are a ...
, 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''. The word "stay" also comes from Latin stare, through Middle French ''estai'', stem of Old French ''ester''.) In Spanish and Portuguese, the high degree of verbal
inflection, plus the existence of two copulas (''ser'' and ''estar''), means that there are 105 (Spanish) and 110 (Portuguese) 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:
Slavic
Some
Slavic languages make a distinction between essence and state (similar to that discussed in the above section on the
Romance languages), by putting a predicative expression denoting a state into the
instrumental case
In grammar, the instrumental case (abbreviated or ) 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. The noun may be either a physical object or an ...
, and essential characteristics are in the
nominative
In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Engl ...
. This can apply with other copula verbs as well: the verbs for "become" are normally used with the instrumental case.
As noted above under , Russian and other
East Slavic languages generally omit the copula in the present tense.
Irish
In
Irish and
Scottish Gaelic, there are two copulas, and the
syntax
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
is also changed when one is distinguishing between states or situations and essential characteristics.
Describing the subject's state or situation typically uses the normal
VSO ordering with the verb ''bí''. The copula ''is'' is used to state essential characteristics or equivalences.
:
The word ''is'' is the copula (rhymes with the English word "miss").
The pronoun used with the copula is different from the normal pronoun. For a masculine singular noun, ''é'' is used (for "he" or "it"), as opposed to the normal pronoun ''sé''; for a feminine singular noun, ''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 being in a state, condition, place, or act, the verb "to be" is used: ''Tá mé ag rith.'' "I am running."
Arabic dialects
North Levantine Arabic
The
North Levantine Arabic
North Levantine Arabic ( ar, اللهجة الشامية الشمالية, al-lahja š-šāmiyya š-šamāliyya, North Levantine Arabic: ) is a subdivision of Levantine Arabic, a variety of Arabic.
It stems from the north in Turkey, specificall ...
dialect, spoken in Syria and Lebanon, has a
negative copula formed by and a suffixed pronoun.
[
]
Bantu languages
Chichewa
In
Chichewa
Chewa (also known as Nyanja, ) is a Bantu language spoken in much of Southern, Southeast and East Africa, namely the countries of Malawi , where it is an official language, and Mozambique and Zambia. The noun class prefix ''chi-'' is used for la ...
, a
Bantu
Bantu may refer to:
*Bantu languages, constitute the largest sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages
*Bantu peoples, over 400 peoples of Africa speaking a Bantu language
* Bantu knots, a type of African hairstyle
*Black Association for National ...
language spoken mainly in
Malawi, a very similar distinction exists between permanent and temporary states as in Spanish and Portuguese, but only in the present tense. For a permanent state, in the 3rd person, the copula used in the present tense is ''ndi'' (negative ''sí''):
:''iyé ndi mphunzitsi'' "he is a teacher"
:''iyé sí mphunzitsi'' "he is not a teacher"
For the 1st and 2nd persons the particle ''ndi'' is combined with pronouns, e.g. ''ine'' "I":
:''ine ndine mphunzitsi'' "I am a teacher"
:''iwe ndiwe mphunzitsi'' "you (singular) are a teacher"
:''ine síndine mphunzitsi'' "I am not a teacher"
For temporary states and location, the copula is the appropriate form of the defective verb ''-li'':
:''iyé ali bwino'' "he is well"
:''iyé sáli bwino'' "he is not well"
:''iyé ali ku nyumbá'' "he is in the house"
For the 1st and 2nd persons the person is shown, as normally with Chichewa verbs, by the appropriate pronominal prefix:
:''ine ndili bwino'' "I am well"
:''iwe uli bwino'' "you (sg.) are well"
:''kunyumbá kuli bwino'' "at home (everything) is fine"
In the past tenses, ''-li'' is used for both types of copula:
:''iyé analí bwino'' "he was well (this morning)"
:''iyé ánaalí mphunzitsi'' "he was a teacher (at that time)"
In the future, subjunctive, or conditional tenses, a form of the verb ''khala'' ("sit/dwell") is used as a copula:
:''máwa ákhala bwino'' "he'll be fine tomorrow"
Muylaq' Aymaran
Uniquely, the existence of the copulative verbalizer suffix in the Southern Peruvian
Aymaran
Aymaran (also Jaqi or Aru) is one of the two dominant language families in the central Andes alongside Quechua languages, Quechuan. The family consists of Aymara language, Aymara, widely spoken in Bolivia, and the endangered Jaqaru language, Jaqa ...
language variety, Muylaq' Aymara, is evident only in the surfacing of a vowel that would otherwise have been deleted because of the presence of a following suffix, lexically prespecified to suppress it. As the copulative verbalizer has no independent phonetic structure, it is represented by the Greek letter ʋ in the examples used in this entry.
Accordingly, unlike in most other Aymaran variants, whose copulative verbalizer is expressed with a vowel-lengthening component, -'':'', the presence of the copulative verbalizer in Muylaq' Aymara is often not apparent on the surface at all and is analyzed as existing only meta-linguistically. However, it is also relevant to note that in a verb phrase like "It is old," the noun ''thantha'' meaning "old" does not require the copulative verbalizer, ''thantha-wa'' "It is old."
It is now pertinent to make some observations about the distribution of the copulative verbalizer. The best place to start is with words in which its presence or absence is obvious. When the vowel-suppressing first person simple tense suffix attaches to a verb, the vowel of the immediately preceding suffix is suppressed (in the examples in this subsection, the subscript "c" appears prior to vowel-suppressing suffixes in the interlinear gloss to better distinguish instances of
deletion
Deletion or delete may refer to:
Computing
* File deletion, a way of removing a file from a computer's file system
* Code cleanup, a way of removing unnecessary variables, data structures, cookies, and temporary files in a programming language
* ...
that arise from the presence of a lexically pre-specified suffix from those that arise from other (e.g. phonotactic) motivations). Consider the verb ''sara''- which is inflected for the first person simple tense and so, predictably, loses its final root vowel: ''sar(a)-
ct-wa'' "I go."
However, prior to the suffixation of the first person simple suffix -''
ct'' to the same root nominalized with the agentive nominalizer -''iri'', the word must be verbalized. The fact that the final vowel of -''iri'' below is not suppressed indicates the presence of an intervening segment, the copulative verbalizer: ''sar(a)-iri-ʋ-t-wa'' "I usually go."
It is worthwhile to compare of the copulative verbalizer in Muylaq' Aymara as compared to La Paz Aymara, a variant which represents this suffix with vowel lengthening. Consider the near-identical sentences below, both translations of "I have a small house" in which the nominal root ''uta-ni'' "house-attributive" is verbalized with the copulative verbalizer, but note that the correspondence between the copulative verbalizer in these two variants is not always a strict one-to-one relation.
:
Georgian
As in English, the verb "to be" (''qopna'') is irregular in
Georgian
Georgian may refer to:
Common meanings
* Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country)
** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group
** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians
**Georgian scripts, three scrip ...
(a
Kartvelian language
The Kartvelian languages (; ka, ქართველური ენები, tr; also known as South Caucasian, Kartvelic, and Iberian languagesBoeder (2002), p. 3) are a language family indigenous to the South Caucasus and spoken primari ...
); 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 (perfective and pluperfect), two roots are used in one verb compound. In the perfective tense, the root ''qop'' (which is the expected root for the perfective tense) is followed by the root ''ar'', which is the root for the present tense. In the pluperfective tense, again, the root ''qop'' is followed by the past tense root ''qav''. This formation is very similar to
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
(an
Indo-European language
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch ...
), where the perfect and the pluperfect 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.
Haitian Creole
Haitian Creole
Haitian Creole (; ht, kreyòl ayisyen, links=no, ; french: créole haïtien, links=no, ), commonly referred to as simply ''Creole'', or ''Kreyòl'' in the Creole language, is a French-based creole language spoken by 10–12million people wor ...
, a
French-based creole language
A French creole, or French-based creole language, is a creole for which French is the lexifier. Most often this lexifier is not modern French but rather a 17th- or 18th-century koiné of French from Paris, the French Atlantic harbors, and the ...
, 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-Creole at its earliest stages of development from French, ''se'' is derived from French (written ''c'est''), which is the normal French contraction of (that, written ''ce'') and the copula (is, written ''est'') (a form of the verb ''être'').
The derivation of ''ye'' is less obvious; but we can assume that the French source was ("he/it is," written ''il est''), which, in rapidly spoken French, is very commonly pronounced as (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-Creole was first developing as a Romance-based
pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from s ...
. 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.
Japanese
![Ja da ya](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Ja_da_ya.png)
The
Japanese copula (most often translated into English as an inflected form of "to be") has many forms. E.g., The form ''da'' is used
predicatively, ''na'' -
attributively, ''de'' -
adverbially or as a connector, and ''desu'' - predicatively or as a politeness indicator.
Examples:
:
''desu'' is the
polite form of the copula. Thus, many sentences like the ones below are almost identical in meaning and differ only in the speaker's politeness to the
addressee
Addressee may refer to:
* Someone to whom mail or similar things are addressed or sent
* Interlocutor (linguistics), a person to whom a conversation or dialogue is addressed
See also
* Address (disambiguation)
* Addressee honorific, linguistic ...
and in nuance of how assured the person is of their statement.
:
A predicate in Japanese is expressed by the predicative form of a verb, the predicative form of an adjective or noun + the predicative form of a copula.
:
Other forms of copula:
である ''de aru'', であります ''de arimasu'' (used in writing and formal speaking)
でございます ''de gozaimasu'' (used in public announcements, notices, etc.)
The copula is subject to dialectal variation throughout Japan, resulting in forms like や ''ya'' in
Kansai
The or the , lies in the southern-central region of Japan's main island Honshu, Honshū. The region includes the Prefectures of Japan, prefectures of Nara Prefecture, Nara, Wakayama Prefecture, Wakayama, Kyoto Prefecture, Kyoto, Osaka Prefectur ...
and じゃ ''ja'' in
Hiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui h ...
(see map above).
Japanese also has two verbs corresponding to English "to be": ''aru'' and ''iru''. They are not copulas 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 speakers, when learning English, often drop the auxiliary verbs "be" and "do," incorrectly believing that "be" is a semantically empty copula equivalent to "desu" and "da."
Korean
For sentences with predicate nominatives, the copula "이" (i-) is added to the predicate nominative (with no space in between).
:
Some adjectives (usually colour adjectives) are nominalized and used with the copula "이"(i-).
1. Without the copula "이"(i-):
:
2. With the copula "이"(i-):
:
Some Korean adjectives are derived using the copula. Separating these articles and nominalizing the former part will often result in a sentence with a related, but different meaning. Using the separated sentence in a situation where the un-separated sentence is appropriate is usually acceptable as the listener can decide what the speaker is trying to say using the context.
Chinese
N.B. The characters used are simplified ones, and the transcriptions given in italics reflect Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern Standar ...
pronunciation, using the pinyin system.
In
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
, both states and qualities are, in general, expressed with
stative verb
According to some linguistics theories, a stative verb is a verb that describes a state of being, in contrast to a dynamic verb, which describes an action. The difference can be categorized by saying that stative verbs describe situations that are ...
s (SV) with no need for a copula, e.g., in
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
, "to be tired" (累 ''lèi''), "to be hungry" (饿 ''è''), "to be located at" (在 ''zài''), "to be stupid" (笨 ''bèn'') and so forth. A sentence can consist simply of a pronoun and such a verb: for example, 我饿 ''wǒ è'' ("I am hungry"). Usually, however, verbs expressing qualities are qualified by an adverb (meaning "very," "not," "quite," etc.); when not otherwise qualified, they are often preceded by 很 ''hěn'', which in other contexts means "very," but in this use often has no particular meaning.
Only sentences with a noun as the complement (e.g., "This is my sister") use the copular verb "to be": . This is used frequently; for example, instead of having a verb meaning "to be Chinese," the usual expression is "to be a Chinese person" (; "I am a Chinese person;" "I am Chinese"). This is sometimes called an
equative verb. Another possibility is for the complement to be just a noun modifier (ending in ), the noun being omitted:
Before the
Han Dynasty, the character 是 served as a
demonstrative pronoun meaning "this." (This usage survives in some idioms and
proverbs.) Some linguists believe 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). The character 是 appears to be formed as a
compound of characters with the meanings of "early" and "straight."
Another use of 是 in modern Chinese is in combination with the modifier 的 ''de'' to mean "yes" or to show agreement. For example:
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''; the corresponding negative answer is 不对 ''bú duì'', "not right.")
Yet another use of 是 is in the ''shì...(de)'' construction, which is used to emphasize a particular element of the sentence; see .
In
Hokkien 是 ''sī'' acts as the copula, and 是 is the equivalent in
Wu Chinese.
Cantonese uses 係 () instead of 是; similarly,
Hakka uses 係 ''he
55''.
Siouan languages
In Siouan languages like
Lakota, in principle almost all words—according to their structure—are verbs. So not only (transitive, intransitive and so-called "stative") verbs but even nouns often behave like verbs and do not need to have copulas.
For example, the word ''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 language Lojban has two words that act similar to a copula in natural languages. The clause ''me ... me'u'' turns whatever follows it into a predicate that means to be (among) what it follows. For example, ''me la .bob. (me'u)'' means "to be Bob," and ''me le ci mensi (me'u)'' means "to be one of the three sisters." Another one is ''du'', which is itself a predicate that means all its arguments are the same thing (equal). One word which is often confused for a copula in Lojban, but isn't one, is ''cu''. It merely indicates that the word which follows is the main predicate of the sentence. For example, ''lo pendo be mi cu zgipre'' means "my friend is a musician," but the word ''cu'' does not correspond to English ''is''; instead, the word ''zgipre'', which is a predicate, corresponds to the entire phrase "is a musician". The word ''cu'' is used to prevent ''lo pendo be mi zgipre'', which would mean "the friend-of-me type of musician".
See also
*
Indo-European copula
*
Nominal sentence
*
Stative verb
According to some linguistics theories, a stative verb is a verb that describes a state of being, in contrast to a dynamic verb, which describes an action. The difference can be categorized by saying that stative verbs describe situations that are ...
*
Subject complement In grammar, a subject complement or predicative of the subject is a predicative expression that follows a linking verb ( copula) and that complements the subject of the sentence by either (1) renaming it or (2) describing it. It completes the mea ...
*
Zero copula
Citations
General references
*
*
* (See "copular sentences" and "existential sentences and expletive ''there''" in Volume II.)
*
*
* Moro, A. (1997
''The Raising of Predicates'' Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.
*
* Tüting, A. W. (December 2003).
Essay on Lakota syntax'. .
*
Further reading
*
*
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Copula (Linguistics)
Parts of speech
Verb types