linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...

, a copula (plural: copulas or copulae;

abbreviated An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...

) is a word or phrase that links the subject of a sentence to a subject complement, such as the word ''is'' in the sentence "The sky is blue" or the phrase ''was not being'' in the sentence "It was not being co-operative." The word ''copula'' derives from the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

noun for a "link" or "tie" that connects two different things. A copula is often a

verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...

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 ...

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes doma ...

courses, a copula is often called a linking verb. In other languages, copulas show more resemblances to

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 ...

s, as in

Classical Chinese Classical Chinese, also known as Literary Chinese (古文 ''gǔwén'' "ancient text", or 文言 ''wényán'' "text speak", meaning "literary language/speech"; modern vernacular: 文言文 ''wényánwén'' "text speak text", meaning "literar ...

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 carr ...

es attached to a noun, as 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 ** ...

, Beja, and

Inuit languages The Inuit languages are a closely related group of indigenous American languages traditionally spoken across the North American Arctic and adjacent subarctic, reaching farthest south in Labrador. The related Yupik languages (spoken in weste ...

. Most languages have one main copula, although some (like

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

, Portuguese and Thai) have more than one, while others have none. 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 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 wit ...

to a subject complement. A copular verb is often considered to be part of the

predicate Predicate or predication may refer to: * Predicate (grammar), in linguistics * Predication (philosophy) * several closely related uses in mathematics and formal logic: **Predicate (mathematical logic) **Propositional function **Finitary relation, o ...

, 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 ...

. A simple clause containing a copula is illustrated below:

The book is on the table.

In that sentence, the

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 ...

''the book'' is the subject, the verb ''is'' serves as the copula, and the

prepositional phrase An adpositional phrase, in linguistics, is a syntactic category that includes ''prepositional phrases'', ''postpositional phrases'', and ''circumpositional phrases''. Adpositional phrases contain an adposition (preposition, postposition, or ci ...

''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 In linguistics, a verb phrase (VP) is a syntactic unit composed of a verb and its arguments except the subject of an independent clause or coordinate clause. Thus, in the sentence ''A fat man quickly put the money into the box'', the words ''q ...

. The predicative expression accompanying the copula, also known as the

complement A complement is something that completes something else. Complement may refer specifically to: The arts * Complement (music), an interval that, when added to another, spans an octave ** Aggregate complementation, the separation of pitch-clas ...

of the copula, may take any of several possible forms: it may be a noun or noun phrase, an

adjective In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ...

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 In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...

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 "inv ...

, the copula moves in front of the subject: ''Are you happy?'' *In inverse copular constructions (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 Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

, 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 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 ...

''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 d ...

''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 The ellipsis (, also known informally as dot dot dot) is a series of dots that indicates an intentional omission of a word, sentence, or whole section from a text without altering its original meaning. The plural is ellipses. The term origin ...

. In particular, in English, the predicative expression may be elided in a construction similar to

verb phrase ellipsis In linguistics, verb phrase ellipsis (VP-ellipsis or VPE) is a type of elliptical construction and a type of anaphora in which a verb phrase has been left out (elided) provided that its antecedent can be found within the same linguistic context. ...

, as in short sentences like ''I am''; ''Are they?'' (where the predicative expression is understood from the previous context). Inverse copular constructions, in which the positions of the predicative expression and the subject are reversed, are found in various languages. 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

and a predicate

. Another issue is verb agreement when both subject and predicative expression are noun phrases (and differ in number or person): in English, the copula typically agrees with the syntactical subject even if it is not logically (i.e. semantically) the subject, as in ''the cause of the riot is'' (not ''are'') ''these pictures of the wall''. Compare Italian ; notice the use of the plural to agree with plural "these photos" rather than with singular "the cause". In instances where an English syntactical subject comprises a prepositional object that is pluralized, however, the prepositional object agrees with the predicative expression, e.g. "What kind ''of birds are'' those?" The definition and scope of the concept of a copula is not necessarily precise in any language. As noted above, though the concept of the copula in English is most strongly associated with the verb ''to be'', there are many other verbs that can be used in a copular sense as well. * 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 o ...

or express an identical concept: They may also express membership of a class or a

subset In mathematics, set ''A'' is a subset of a set ''B'' if all 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 unequal, then ''A'' is a proper subset of ...

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 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 language ...

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the ...

and Irish.

Forms

In many languages the principal copula is a

, like English ''(to) be'', German ,

Mixtec The Mixtecs (), or Mixtecos, are indigenous Mesoamerican peoples of Mexico inhabiting the region known as La Mixteca of Oaxaca and Puebla as well as La Montaña Region and Costa Chica Regions of the state of Guerrero. The Mixtec Cult ...

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 Al ...

''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 exclusive ...

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 Verbs constitute one of the main parts of speech (word classes) in the English language. Like other types of words in the language, English verbs are not heavily inflected. Most combinations of tense, aspect, mood and voice are expressed peri ...

for details). Other copulas show more resemblances to

s. That is the case for

and Guarani, for instance. In highly

synthetic language A synthetic language uses inflection or agglutination to express 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 combi ...

s, copulas are often

es, attached to a noun, but they may still behave otherwise like ordinary verbs: in

. 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 governme ...

, the copula takes the form of suffixes that attach to a noun but are distinct from the person agreement markers used on predicative verbs. 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 ...

ized independent pronouns. For cases in which the copula is omitted or takes

zero 0 (zero) is a number representing an empty quantity. In place-value notation such as the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, 0 also serves as a placeholder numerical digit, which works by Multiplication, multiplying digits to the left of 0 by th ...

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 An auxiliary verb ( abbreviated ) is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany an infinitive verb or a ...

, especially for expressing

passive voice A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or '' patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing ...

(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 The continuous and progressive aspects ( abbreviated and ) are grammatical aspects that express incomplete action ("to do") or state ("to be") in progress at a specific time: they are non-habitual, imperfective aspects. In the grammars of many ...

(together with the

present 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 fro ...

): 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 Prototypical conditional sentences in English are those of the form ''"If X, then Y".'' The clause ''X'' is referred to as the ''antecedent'' (or ''protasis''), while the clause ''Y'' is called the ''consequent'' (or ''apodosis''). A conditional ...

. (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 Existence is the ability of an entity to interact with reality. In philosophy, it refers to the ontological property of being. Etymology The term ''existence'' comes from Old French ''existence'', from Medieval Latin ''existentia/exsistentia' ...

), rather than linking to a predicative expression as it does when used as a copula. In

ontology In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophy, philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, Becoming (philosophy), becoming, and reality. Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into Category ...

it is sometimes suggested that the "is" of existence is reducible to the "is" of property attribution or class membership; to be,

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ...

held, is to be ''something''. However,

Abelard Peter Abelard (; french: link=no, Pierre Abélard; la, Petrus Abaelardus or ''Abailardus''; 21 April 1142) was a Middle Ages, medieval French Scholasticism, scholastic philosopher, leading logician, theologian, poet, composer and musician. This ...

in his ''Dialectica'' made a ''

reductio ad absurdum In logic, (Latin for "reduction to absurdity"), also known as (Latin for "argument to absurdity") or ''apagogical arguments'', is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absu ...

'' 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 An existential clause is a clause that refers to the existence or presence of something, such as "There is a God" and "There are boys in the yard". The use of such clauses can be considered analogous to existential quantification in predicate l ...

. Relying on a unified theory of copular sentences, it has been proposed that the English ''there''-sentences are subtypes of

inverse copular construction 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 ...

Zero copula

In some languages, copula omission occurs within a particular grammatical context. For example, speakers of Russian, Indonesian, Turkish, Hungarian,

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a 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. E.Watson; Walter ...

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 ...

Geʽez Geez (; ' , and sometimes referred to in scholarly literature as Classical Ethiopic) is an ancient Ethiopian Semitic language. The language originates from what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. Today, Geez is used as the main liturgi ...

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 widel ...

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

aphorism An aphorism (from Greek ἀφορισμός: ''aphorismos'', denoting 'delimitation', 'distinction', and 'definition') is a concise, terse, laconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle. Aphorisms are often handed down by ...

ic 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 language ...

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 urb ...

, 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 Southern Quechua ( qu, Urin qichwa, es, quechua sureño), or simply Quechua (Qichwa or Qhichwa), is the most widely spoken of the major regional groupings of mutually intelligible dialects within the Quechua language family, with about 6.9 mil ...

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 Co ...

, the zero copula can be used in

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

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.

In particular languages

Indo-European

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, Du ...

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 etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical ef ...

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 Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo ...

stems: ''*es-'' (''*h₁es-''), ''*sta-'' (''*steh₂-''), ''*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 s ...

). For more details see

. For the etymology of the various forms, see

Indo-European copula A feature common to all Indo-European languages is the presence of a verb corresponding to the English verb ''to be''. General features This verb has two basic meanings: *In a less marked context it is a simple copula (''I’m tired''; ''That ...

. 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 (

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 ...

and

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' 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 List of ISO romanizations, series of international standards for romanization by the International Organization for Standardization. It was publ ...

Romance

Copulas in the

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 registers of Latin spoken from the Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve into numerous Romance languages. Its literary counterpa ...

''essere''; ''esse'' deriving from ''*es-''), often referenced as ''sum'' (another of the Latin verb's

principal parts In language learning, the principal parts of a verb are those forms that a student must memorize in order to be able to conjugate the verb through all its forms. The concept originates in the humanist Latin schools, where students learned verbs ...

) 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 In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and ...

, 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 language The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the Ea ...

s make a distinction between essence and state (similar to that discussed in the above section on the

Romance Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to: Common meanings * Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings * Romance languages, ...

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 a ...

, 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 Eng ...

. 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 The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of the Slavic languages, distinct from the West and South Slavic languages. East Slavic languages are currently spoken natively throughout Eastern Europe, and eastwards to Siber ...

generally omit the copula in the present tense.

Irish

In Irish and

Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...

, 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 ( constituenc ...

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, specifica ...

dialect, spoken in Syria and Lebanon, has a negative copula formed by and a suffixed pronoun.

Bantu languages

Chichewa

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 l ...

, 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 Nationa ...

language spoken mainly in

Malawi Malawi (; or aláwi Tumbuka: ''Malaŵi''), officially the Republic of Malawi, is a landlocked country in Southeastern Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northe ...

, 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 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 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 (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 **Ge ...

(an

), 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 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 tha ...

, 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

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'' -

adverbial In English grammar, an adverbial ( abbreviated ) is a word (an adverb) or a group of words (an adverbial clause or adverbial phrase) that modifies or more closely defines the sentence or the verb. (The word ''adverbial'' itself is also used as an ...

ly 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 In lingui ...

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 ...

(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 standa ...

pronunciation, using the

pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese fo ...

system. In Chinese, 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, "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 Han dynasty (, ; ) was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Emperor Gaozu of Han, Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by th ...

, the character 是 served as a

demonstrative pronoun Demonstratives ( abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular fram ...

meaning "this." (This usage survives in some idioms and

proverbs A proverb (from la, proverbium) is a simple and insightful, traditional saying that expresses a perceived truth based on common sense or experience. Proverbs are often metaphorical and use formulaic language. A proverbial phrase or a proverbia ...

.) 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 Classical Chinese, also known as Literary Chinese (古文 ''gǔwén'' "ancient text", or 文言 ''wényán'' "text speak", meaning "literary language/speech"; modern vernacular: 文言文 ''wényánwén'' "text speak text", meaning "literar ...

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 The Hokkien () variety of Chinese is a Southern Min language native to and originating from the Minnan region, where it is widely spoken in the south-eastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is one of the national languages ...

是 ''sī'' acts as the copula, and 是 is the equivalent in

Wu Chinese The Wu languages (; Wu romanization and IPA: ''wu6 gniu6'' [] ( Shanghainese), ''ng2 gniu6'' [] (Suzhounese), Mandarin pinyin and IPA: ''Wúyǔ'' []) is a major group of Sinitic languages spoken primarily in Shanghai, Zhejiang, Zhejiang Provin ...

Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding a ...

uses 係 () instead of 是; similarly,

Hakka The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhej ...

uses 係 ''he⁵⁵''.

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 A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction. ...

Lojban Lojban (pronounced ) is a logical, constructed, human language created by the Logical Language Group which aims to be syntactically unambigious. It succeeds the Loglan project. The Logical Language Group (LLG) began developing Lojban in 198 ...

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".

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
'. . *

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Copula (Linguistics) Parts of speech Verb types