>From: "David J. Peterson" <dedalvs@...>
>Reply-To: Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>
>To: CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
>Subject: Re: Copula
>Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 22:28:50 -0700
>
>H.S. Teoh wrote:
><<
>ObConlang: Tatari Faran has no copula, period. It gets by with simple
>juxtaposition. In a simple statement of equivalence, e.g., "That is a
>rabbit", the equivalent of the English subject is in the conveyant case,
>and the predicate is in the absolutive case:
>
> mei sei tiki.
> (this CVY.FEM) rabbit
> This is a rabbit.
> >>
>
>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. 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. Are there
>any conlangs that are like Russian in the present? If so, what do
>they do in other tenses?
>
>-David
>*******************************************************************
>"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
>"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
>
>-Jim Morrison
>
>
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