Re: Copulas

On Mon, 15 Mar 1999, Herman Miller wrote:

> On Sun, 14 Mar 1999 21:07:01 -0800, Sally Caves <scaves@...>
> wrote:
>
> >I get the strong feeling that "zero copula" is one of the most popular conlang
> >features.
> >Teonaht has it, and in my perusal of other's conlangs, I see it all over the
> >place, like
> >the ergative.  How right am I?  <G>
>
> Cispa is that way, but I can't think of any others at the moment.
Valdyan is zero copula, though it has a "placeholder" for the copula
in past and future, that is not a verb itself but only marks tense
because there's no verb to mark the tense on (I'm going to write
something about it soon).

No ergative, though; probably because I didn't know the ergative
existed when I first started developing Valdyan, and I'm not given to
making arbitrary changes just because I've discovered something I
like. (I know someone who does that; every time he learns something
new he changes the whole system of his conlang to accommodate it.
Very annoying, especially when I was trying to learn it).

   Irina

               ira@rempt.xs4all.nl (mailing list address)
                     irina@rempt.xs4all.nl (myself)
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