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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. Many languages exhibit this in some contexts, including Assamese,
Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
,
Kannada Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...
,
Malay Malay may refer to: Languages * Malay language or Bahasa Melayu, a major Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore ** History of the Malay language, the Malay language from the 4th to the 14th century ** Indonesi ...
/
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,
Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, nativ ...
, Dravidian,
Telugu Telugu may refer to: * Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India *Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India * Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language ** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode S ...
,
Kannada Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...
,
Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam was des ...
,
Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...
, Guarani, Kazakh, Turkmen,
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
,
Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...
,
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
, Belarusian,
Tatar The Tatars ()Tatar
in the Collins English Dictionary
is an umbrella term for different
, Azerbaijani, Swahili, Hungarian,
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
,
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
, Berber, Ganda, Hawaiian, Sinhala,
Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
,
Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
,
Nahuatl Nahuatl (; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller ...
, Maori, Mongolian, Greenlandic, Lithuanian, Latvian,
Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...
, Slovakian,
Quechua Quechua may refer to: *Quechua people, several indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru *Quechuan languages, a Native South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language **So ...
and
American Sign Language American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual lang ...
. Dropping the copula is also found, to a lesser extent, in
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
and many other languages, used most frequently in
rhetoric Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...
, casual speech, non-standard varieties, and
headlinese The headline or heading is the text indicating the content or nature of the article below it, typically by providing a form of brief summary of its contents. The large type ''front page headline'' did not come into use until the late 19th centur ...
, the writing style used in
newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports a ...
headline The headline or heading is the text indicating the content or nature of the article below it, typically by providing a form of brief summary of its contents. The large type ''front page headline'' did not come into use until the late 19th centur ...
s. Sometimes, these omissions cause unintended
syntactic ambiguity Syntactic ambiguity, also called structural ambiguity, amphiboly or amphibology, is a situation where a sentence may be interpreted in more than one way due to ambiguous sentence structure. Syntactic ambiguity arises not from the range of mean ...
.


In English

Standard English exhibits a few limited forms of the zero copula. One is found in comparative correlatives like "the higher, the better" and "
the more the merrier ''The More the Merrier'' is a 1943 American comedy film by Columbia Pictures starring Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea and Charles Coburn, and directed by George Stevens. The film script — from "Two's a Crowd", an original screenplay by Garson Kan ...
". However, no known natural language lacks this structure, and it is not clear how a comparative is joined with its correlate in this kind of copula. Zero copula also appears in casual questions and statements like "you from out of town?" and "enough already!" where the verb (and more) may be omitted due to syncope. It can also be found, in a slightly different and more regular form, in the
headline The headline or heading is the text indicating the content or nature of the article below it, typically by providing a form of brief summary of its contents. The large type ''front page headline'' did not come into use until the late 19th centur ...
s of English
newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports a ...
s, where short words and
articles Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: G ...
are generally omitted to conserve space. For example, a headline would more likely say "Parliament at a standstill" than "Parliament ''is'' at a standstill". Because headlines are generally simple, in "A is B" statements, an explicit copula is rarely necessary. The zero copula is far more common in some varieties of Caribbean creoles and
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 ...
, where phrases like "where you at?", and "who she?" can occur. As in Russian and Arabic, the copula can only be omitted in the present tense; the copula can only be omitted in African American Vernacular English where it can be contracted in Standard American English.


In other languages

Omission frequently depends on the tense and use of the copula.


Assamese

In Assamese zero copula is usually used in the
present tense The present tense (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense whose principal function is to locate a situation or event in the present time. The present tense is used for actions which are happening now. In order to explain and understand present ...
with a prepositional phrase or the
adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...
'here' or 'there'. For example, in the sentence, (, "We are here"), the copula () is omitted.


Russian

In
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
the copula () is normally omitted in the
present tense The present tense (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense whose principal function is to locate a situation or event in the present time. The present tense is used for actions which are happening now. In order to explain and understand present ...
, but not in the
past The past is the set of all events that occurred before a given point in time. The past is contrasted with and defined by the present and the future. The concept of the past is derived from the linear fashion in which human observers experience ...
and "
future tense In grammar, a future tense (abbreviated ) is a verb form that generally marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future. An example of a future tense form is the French ''aimera'', meaning ...
s": Present (omitted): * (, "She at home"), literally "She is now at home, in the house" Past (used): * (, "She was at home") The third person plural (, "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: * (, "they are one and the same"). The verb () is the infinitive of "to be". The third person singular, () means "is" (and it is a homophone of the infinitive "to eat"). As a copula, it can be inflected into the past (, ), "future" (, ), and conditional (, ) forms. A present tense (, ) exists; however, it is almost never used as a copula, but rather omitted altogether or replaced by the verb (, "to be in essence"). Thus one can say: * (, "she was a beautiful woman")—predicate noun in
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 ...
. * (, "she is a beautiful woman")—predicate noun in the
nominative case 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 ...
. * (, "she is a beautiful woman")—predicate noun also in instrumental. But not usually: * (, "she is a beautiful woman"), which would be very formal and would suggest something more than a copula, something more existential than the normal English use of "is". As a result, this construction is quite rare. But in some cases the verb in the present tense (form ) is employed: (Be who you are). 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 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (, ; rus, Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский, Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, p=ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ dəstɐˈjefskʲɪj, a=ru-Dostoevsky.ogg, links=yes; 11 November 18219 ...
) but is now used only for archaic effect (analogous to "
thou The word ''thou'' is a second-person singular pronoun in English. It is now largely archaic, having been replaced in most contexts by the word '' you'', although it remains in use in parts of Northern England and in Scots (). ''Thou'' is the ...
art" in English).


Turkic languages

There is a contrast between the regular verb "to be" () and the copulative/auxiliary verb "to be" () in Turkish. The auxiliary verb shows its existence only through suffixes to predicates that can be nouns, adjectives or arguably conjugated verb stems, arguably being the only
irregular verb A regular verb is any verb whose conjugation follows the typical pattern, or one of the typical patterns, of the language to which it belongs. A verb whose conjugation follows a different pattern is called an irregular verb. This is one instanc ...
in Turkish. In the third person, zero copula is the rule, as in Hungarian or Russian. For example: : The ''essential'' copula is possible in the third person singular: : In
Tatar The Tatars ()Tatar
in the Collins English Dictionary
is an umbrella term for different
, expresses doubt rather than a characteristic. The origin of is the verb , with a similar meaning to the Latin . In the modern Tatar language copula is a disappearing grammatical phenomenon and is only rarely used with the first and second person (while the third person copula has fallen completely out of use). In the past there was a full paradigm for all persons: : For example: (, "I'm a teacher"), (, "You're a teacher"), (, "He/She's a teacher"). While the copulas for the first and second person are historically derived from personal pronouns, the third person copula comes from the verb (, "stand, live, exist"). For negation the copula affix is attached to the negative particle (): (, "I'm not a writer"). The copula is only used with nouns. Sometimes the noun can be in the locative case: (, "You are at home").


Japanese

In
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
, the copula is not used with predicative adjectives, such as . It is sometimes omitted with predicative nouns and adjectival nouns in non-past tense, such as , but is necessary for marking past tense or negation, as in . It is also sometimes omitted in wh-questions, such as .


Māori

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 expressions and with continuous verbs (many of which take a copulative verb in many Indo-European languages) — , literally "a big the house", "the house (is) big"; , literally "at (past locative particle) the table the book", "the book (was) on the table"; , literally "from England (s)he", "(s)he (is) from England"; , literally "at the (act of) eating I", "I (am) eating"


Arabic

In
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
, a
Semitic language The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant a ...
, the use of the zero copula again depends on the context. In the present tense affirmative, when the subject is
definite In linguistics, definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between referents or senses that are identifiable in a given context (definite noun phrases) and those which are not (indefinite noun phrases). The prototypical d ...
and the predicate is indefinite, the subject is simply juxtaposed with its predicate. When both the subject and the predicate are
definite In linguistics, definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between referents or senses that are identifiable in a given context (definite noun phrases) and those which are not (indefinite noun phrases). The prototypical d ...
, a
pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not co ...
( agreeing with the subject) may be inserted between the two. For example: * (), "Muhammad is an engineer" (lit. "Muhammad an-engineer") * (), "Muhammad is the engineer' (lit. "Muhammad he the-engineer") The extra pronoun is highly recommended in order for one not to confuse the predicate for a qualifying adjective: * (), "Muhammad the engineer' (This is just a
noun phrase In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently oc ...
with no copula. See ''
al- ( ar, ٱلْـ), also Romanized as ''el-'', ''il-,'' and ''l-'' as pronounced in some varieties of Arabic, is the definite article in the Arabic language: a particle (''ḥarf'') whose function is to render the noun on which it is prefixed de ...
'' 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 and are used, which take the
accusative case The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘the ...
: * (), "Muhammad was an engineer' ( = "(he) was") (literally "be it Muhammad an-engineer") * (), "Muhammad is not an engineer' (lit. "Muhammad is not an-engineer") When the copula is expressed with a verb, no pronoun need be inserted, regardless of the definiteness of the predicate: * (), "Muhammad is not the engineer' (lit. "Muhammad is not of the-engineer")
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
, another
Semitic language The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant a ...
, uses zero copula in a very similar way.


Ganda

The Ganda verb "to be", , 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: *, "She is beautiful' (, "(he/she) is") *, "Kintu is in the car" (literally "Kintu he-is in-car") Otherwise, the zero copula is used: *, "The girl is beautiful" (literally "the-girl beautiful") Here the word , "beautiful" is missing its initial vowel pre-prefix . If included, it would make the adjective qualify the noun attributively: *, "The beautiful girl' or "a beautiful girl".


American Sign Language

American Sign Language American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual lang ...
does not have a copula. For example, "my hair is wet" is signed ''my hair wet'', and "my name is Pete" may be signed ''
Y NAME Y, or y, is the twenty-fifth and penultimate letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. According to some authorities, it is the sixth (or seventh ...
sup>topic P-E-T-E''.


Irish

The copula is used in Irish but may be omitted in the present tense. For example, ("He is a big man") can be expressed as simply . The common phrase (meaning "anyhow", lit. "Whatever story it s) also omits the copula.


Welsh

The fact that
Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
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 ("Since he is/was/etc. a short man...") literally translates as "And he
article Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: G ...
a short man...". The zero copula is especially common in Welsh poetry of the style.


Amerindian languages

Nahuatl Nahuatl (; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller ...
, as well as some other
Amerindian language Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large numbe ...
s, 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 In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...
al copula. Affixal copulae are not unique to Amerindian languages but can be found, for instance, in
Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...
and in the
Eskimo languages The Eskaleut (), Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in the family are indigenous to parts of w ...
. Many indigenous languages of South America do, however, have true zero copulae in which no overt free ''or'' bound
morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology. In English, morphemes are ...
is present when one noun is equated with another. In fact, zero-copula is likely to occur in third-person contexts in Southern Quechua (notice ''wasiqa hatunmi'' 'the house is big' vs. ''wasiqa hatunmi kan'' 'the house is big', where ''kan'', the Quechua copula, is not really needed, as suggested by the first sentence). Yaghan, from Tierra del Fuego, used, in its heyday back in the mid-19th century, zero copula as one option, when introducing new participants in discourse, but had a slew of posture-based copular verbs for all other contexts. So I could say, kvnji-u:a Jon (lit. 'this man IS John'(zero copula). kvnji 'this', u:a 'man' (v here is schwa, and colon marks tenseness of the vowel preceding it), but once John has been introduced I might say, Jon lvpatvx-wvshta:gu:a mu:ta 'John is a woodworker', lvpatvx 'wood' (x voiceless velar fricative), wvshta:gu: 'work' u:a 'man', mu:ta irregular present tense form of mu:tu: 'to be (sitting) (or occupied doing)'


Chinese

Modern 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 standa ...
, as well as many other Chinese dialects, uses a copula, such as the Mandarin word ''shì'' (是), before nouns in predications, like in ''Wŏ shì Zhōngguó rén'' (我是中国人 / I am Chinese), but not usually before verbs or adjectives. For example, saying ''Wǒ shì kāixīn'' (我是开心 / I am happy) is a grammatically incorrect sentence, but saying ''Wǒ kāixīn'' (我开心 / I happy), is correct. Adverbs can be added to the adjective, like in ''Wǒ hĕn kāixīn'' (我很开心 / I very happy). A copula may be used for adjectives, however, if the particle ''de'' (的) is added after the adjective, like in ''Wǒ shì kāixīn de'' (我是开心的).


Vietnamese

Somewhat similar to Chinese, the
Vietnamese language Vietnamese ( vi, tiếng Việt, links=no) is an Austroasiatic languages, Austroasiatic language originating from Vietnam where it is the national language, national and official language. Vietnamese is spoken natively by over 70 million people, ...
requires the copula before nouns in predications but does not use a copula before verbs or adjectives, thus (I am a student) but (I msmart). The topic marker may appear before an adjective to emphasize the subject, for example (As for me, I am smart). Many prepositions in Vietnamese originated as verbs and continue to function as verbs in sentences that would use a copula in English. For example, in (I am at home), the word may be analyzed as either "to be at" or simply "at".


See also

*
Turkish copula The Turkish copula is one of the more distinct features of Turkish grammar. In Turkish, copulas are called ''ek-eylem'' () or ''ek-fiil'' () (' suffix-verb'). Turkish is a highly agglutinative language and copulas are rendered as suffixes, al ...
* Zero copula in Hungarian *
Double copula The double copula, also known as the reduplicative copula, double is or Isis, is the usage of two successive copulae when only one is necessary, largely in spoken English. For example: :''My point is, is that...'' This construction is accepted ...
or copula duplication; used in some styles of English *
Pro-drop language A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping") is a language where certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they can be pragmatically or grammatically inferable. The precise conditions vary from language to language, and can be quite int ...
s, in which a subject pronoun is commonly omitted or implied


References


Literature

*Wolfram, Walter (1969) A Sociolinguistic Description of Detroit Negro Speech. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics p. 165-179 {{DEFAULTSORT:Zero Copula Nonstandard English grammar Verb types Zero (linguistics) br:Verb-stagañ mann he:אוגד#העדר אוגד