Copula (linguistics)
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Date: 2018-12-28

Copula (linguistics), by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=5630 / CC BY SA 3.0

Copula (linguistics)

In linguistics, a copula (plural: copulas or copulae; abbreviated ) is a word used to link the subject of a sentence with a predicate (a subject complement), such as the word "is" in the sentence "The sky is blue." The word "copula" derives from the Latin noun for a "link" or "tie" that connects two different things.

A copula is often a verb or a verb-like word, though this is not universally the case. A verb that is a copula is sometimes called a copulative or copular verb. In English primary education grammar courses, a copula is often called a linking verb. In other languages, copulas show more resemblances to pronouns, as in Classical Chinese and Guarani, or may take the form of suffixes attached to a noun, as in Beja and Inuit languages.

Most languages have one main copula, although some (such as Spanish, Portuguese and Thai) have more than one, and some have none. In the case of English, this is the verb "to be". While the term "copula" is generally used to refer to such principal forms, it may also be used to refer to some other verbs with similar functions, like "become", "get", "feel" and "seem" in English (these may also be called "semi-copulas" or "pseudo-copulas").

The principal use of a copula is to link the subject of a clause to the predicate. A copular verb is often considered to be part of the predicate, the remainder being called a predicative expression. A simple clause containing a copula is illustrated below:
In that sentence, the noun phrase "the book" is the subject, the verb "is" serves as the copula, and the prepositional phrase "on the table" is the predicative expression. The whole expression "is on the table" may (in some theories of grammar) be called a predicate or a verb phrase.

The predicative expression accompanying the copula, also known as the complement of the copula, may take any of several possible forms: it may ...