The English word be has many meanings, which are the subject of discussions in grammar and ontology . One can distinguish, as logicians do, the possession of attributes from class membership. I want only to be , and that is enough. There's no sense in making a scientific inquiry about what species the Loch Ness Monster is, without first establishing that the Loch Ness Monster indeed is. Boys will be boys.
Dogs are canines.
The hen is next to the rooster. These are the kinds of issues that make machine translation difficult. Finally, the divisions are not always clear and consistent. There is a past-tense copula in the Russian language.