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Re: Copulas

From:Charles <catty@...>
Date:Monday, March 15, 1999, 0:06
> At 07:27 PM 3/9/99 -0800, JOEL MATTHEW PEARSON wrote: > >So how do copular constructions work in other people's conlangs? > > > >Matt. > > > > An interesting and complex question. With one exception (the Indo-European, > or perhaps Nostratic, conlang that I mentioned rather vaguely several months > ago, which I'm still not ready to talk more specifically about), none of my > conlangs has a single general-purpose copular verb corresponding closely to > English "be". > > As I see it, "be" (and Indo-European copular verbs generally) have four > distinct functions. (And there may be others that I haven't thought of.) > In other words, there are four different types of declarative sentence that > all have the form "X is Y". In all four types, X is a noun phrase, but Y is > a different type of constituent in each of them.
I like Bateman's analysis ... http://www.darmstadt.gmd.de/publish/komet/gen-um/node17.html http://www.darmstadt.gmd.de/publish/komet/gen-um/node1.html