Re: "to be" or "not to be"

David Peterson wrote:
I
>wonder what Payne has to say about negation.
>
>There is some, but not enough about copulae, I'm afraid.  Here
>are the relevant examples:
>
>Tagalog
>Wala akong pera.  "I don't have any money."
>Hindi ko alam.  "I don't know."
Wala (if i'm not mistaken) is used for "there is not...", similar to (and
cognate with) Indonesian ada 'there is'; this + a possessive construction is
their way of saying "to have".

Hindi is simply the ordinary negator, 'not'.

Curiously, my Pilipino dictionary calls wala (actually walá) "1. pron.,
none, nothing 2. adj. absent" with a bunch of verbal derivs meaning to lack,
to release/get free, be missing/disappear. Then 8 double column pages of
compounds with walang-XX  meaning XX-less or un-XX.
>
>These are two different types of negative verbs.  Unfortunately,
>these examples aren't glossed (d'oh!).  Perhaps someone familiar
>with Tagalog could help us out, and tell us how "I'm not a teacher"
>vs. "I am a teacher" works?
Not sure how Tag. handles that; Indonesian uses a different negator for
nouns:

saya tidak sakit (I not sick) 'I'm not sick'
tidak ada uangku (~uang saya) 'I don't have any money'
saya tidak tahu 'I don't know'

ia guru 'he's a teacher'
ia bukan guru 'he's not a teacher'
bukan ia~Ali yang datang 'it's not he/Ali who's coming'

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