Re: "to be" and not to be in the world's languages
| From: | Isaac Penzev <isaacp@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, March 28, 2006, 8:15 |
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Philip Newton girs'epset':
| On 3/22/06, Rob Haden <magwich78@...> wrote:
| > Slavic languages typically don't have "to be" in the present tense.
|
| Is this really typical?
|
| I know that Russian doesn't have "to be" in the present tense, but
| Polish and Czech do. I'm fairly sure Bulgarian and Serbian do as well.
|
| Maybe Russian is the odd one out and the "typical" behaviour for
| Slavic languages *is* to have a present-tense "to be"?
East Slavic langs (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian) are odd. They tend to
avoid using the verb "to be" in the present tense. But nevertheless, the
very verb does exist even in the present tense form, and may be used for
emphasis, for poetic purposes etc.
-- Yitzik
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