Re: Copula

Elliott Lash wrote:
> Ray wrote:
>
>
>>>Are there any
>>>langauges that treat the copula as a transitive
>>
>>verb?
>>
>>Which would mean the copula has a passive form - I
>>suspect there are none.
>
>
> I suspect that what you meant by 'passive form', is
> 'occurs in a passive construction'...then I'd agree
> with you. However, Scottish Gaelic, Irish and Old
> Irish all have intransitive verbs that can be
> <morphologically> passive (i.e. the same form as
> passive transitive verbs), but of course, this form is
> <syntactically> and <semantically> used in an
> impersonal construction.
So in fact did Latin, e.g.
itur - one goes, they go, we go etc etc (Fr. on va)
ventum est - one came, people came, they came etc etc

They're called impersonal passives since there is no subject.

What I should have stated more clearly is that if a verb is transitive,
then we must be able to have a passive form in which the direct object
of the active verb is the subject of the passive form. it does not mean,
of course, that other verbs may not in a particular also have a passive
construction.

Therefore if 'me' was the direct object of "It is me", then we would be
able to have a passive construction *"I is been by it" - we cannot (cf.
He sees me ~ I am seen by him).
---------------------------

Further to my previous mail, I had meant to add this quote from Trask in
which he defined 'copula' as:
"A semantically  empty formative, most often a verb, which in some
languages serves to link a subject NP to a predicate which is either
identified with the subject or characterizes the subject; an example is
English _be_ in _Lisa is a translator_ and _She is my closest friend_."

The only reason we classify the copula as a verb in languages like
English, Esperanto, Latin etc is that it has the same morphology as
verbs do. But this is not always the case (i.e. it ain't always a verb),
and some languages do not have a copula.

Also it should be clear from Trask that the role of the second argument
(is either identified with the subject or characterizes the subject) is
quite different from that of a direct object.

That fact that colloquial English has 'me' in "It's me" does not show
that the second argument is the direct object any more than the common
colloquial "Me and John went to see her" shows that "me" in the first
argument is the subject. IMO it is very misleading to talk about
contemporary English uses of I~me in terms of Latin grammar.

--
Ray
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