Re: Poijpohloneny

En réponse à Henrik Theiling :


>You can use 'to be' as a full verb, too:
>
>- I think, therefore I am.
In this case, "to be" means "to exist". It's one of its uses as full verb.

>In all of the above sentences:
>
>    'The book is on the table.'
>    'The book is new.'
>    'This is a new book.'
>
>I would analyse 'is' as the copula.  It it was not in the first
>sentence, then that sentence would be highly mystical to me:
>'That book does its being on the table!' :-)
You forget the second full verb use of "to be": verb of position. It's
*not* a copula in the first sentence (a test is that the copula can be
replaced by verbs like "seem", as in: "the book is new" -> "the book seems
new". But you can't have: "the book is on the table" -> *"the book seems on
the table". You can only have: "the book seems to be on the table". On the
other hand, you can replace "to be" with "to stand", "to lie", etc... in
this sentence, showing that it's indeed here a verb of position here).

Some languages separate the position sense from "to be". Cf. Spanish with
its ser/estar distinction (although "estar" does have copula uses too,
"ser" can *never* be use for position, only "estar" is allowed there), or
German which doesn't use "sein" for position and prefers to use true
position verbs like "stehen", "liegen" or "sitzen" (or so I have learned.
Maybe it's actually allowed to use "sein" for position, I don't know).

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.

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