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Re: "to be" and not to be in the world's languages

From:Rob Haden <magwich78@...>
Date:Wednesday, March 22, 2006, 17:48
On Mon, 20 Mar 2006 16:14:29 -0500, Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> wrote:

>Taliesin wrote: > >> There's a guy in Oslo (Pål Kristian Eriksen) who's just finished/gotten >> his doctorate in typological linguistics. His dissertation is on "to >> be": which languages have a separate word for it, which languages don't, >> and why. >> >> Unfortunately, his uni the University of Oslo isn't too fond of the >> riffraff (that is: anyone not at the university of Oslo) paving on their >> precious dissertations[*] so I don't know if there exists an electronic >> copy at all > >Probably waiting for all those offers from publishers to start rolling >in.........Maybe someone could hack into Mr. Eriksen's computer and lift his >copy---but it would be wrong. > >(Snip some summary) >The reason why "to >> be" is needed is because you can't add a particle/word meaning "not" >> directly to a noun used as a predicate, you need a buffer-word of some >> sort, hence "to be". > >Immediate counter-ex (perhaps he knows it)-- Indonesian/Malay uses a >different word to negate noun predicates--
What about Slavic languages, e.g. Russian? Is the following allowed: "Alexei nyet doktor" = "Alexei is not (a) doctor"? - Rob

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Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>