Re: Copula

On Mon, Mar 19, 2007 at 10:28:50PM -0700, David J. Peterson wrote:
[...]
> I always wondered about tenses other than the unmarked tense in
> languages that do this.  For example, in Zhyler, the copula can be
> dropped if the subject is third person and the tense is present.  It's
> required, otherwise, because it carries pronominal information and
> tense information.  In Russian, there's no copula--in the present.
> But if you want to say "He was a teacher", or "He used to be a
> teacher", you do need to have a verb there.
Actually, Russian does have a present tense copula (есть),[1] but it is
normally elided except for emphasis or disambiguation. It occurs in
phrases such as У меня есть книга ("I have a book", lit., "with me is a
book"). But even here it is optional: У меня книга ("I have a book") is
also valid. One example where the copula occurs for emphasis: У меня нет
мелочи, а у него есть. "I don't have any change, but he has." I don't
think it's legal to elide the copula in the second clause.

[1] есть is historically the 3rd person singular form of the verb to be,
быть, although now used for all persons/number. It is not to be confused
with the infinitive of the verb "to eat", also spelt есть in the modern
orthography.


> Kamakawi is lucky, because the tense information is encoded on
> non-verb particles, and there's no agreement.  I've never been clear
> on how one gets by without a copula in languages that don't have one
> when the verb ordinarily encodes tense information.  I know that in
> Tatari Faran, the tense information is encoded with adverbs.
[...]

Yeah, TF uses adverbs to indicate tense, although they are optional and
usually omitted where tense can be inferred from context.


T

--
The early bird gets the worm. Moral: ewww...