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Re: Copulas

From:Irina Rempt <ira@...>
Date:Monday, March 15, 1999, 14:47
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) http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/frontpage.html (English) http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/backpage.html (Nederlands)