Talk:Zero copula

message: Is Russian the only slavic language using ZeroCopula? (The only one I've come across, not sure about Ukrainian), can anyone expand this? Is this a feature of East Slavic languages?
:Odd, I'm wondering that too. I'd expect Belarusian and Ukrainian to have the same features. And by the way, how did the "bytj" noun really inflect for the first person? Is it jest for every present form? --nlitement [talk] 01:25, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Ukrainian and Belorussian do have zero copula. As to the verb to be in Russian, its inflection used to be as follows: I am = я есмь, thou art = ты еси, he/she/it is = он/она/оно есть, we are = мы есме, you are = вы есте, they are = они суть. Of course, there were some dialectal and temporal differences. Also, for the dual number, when it existed: we (two of us) are = мы есвъ, you (two of you) are = вы еста; third person is unclear, no examples found.  --X-Man 13:34, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

text: What of Polish, Czech, Slovakian, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, etc.? It would be weird if East Slavic languages (and Irish) are the only Indo-European ones with zero copula. --Humanophage (talk) 22:36, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Lithuanian, as fas as I know, uses copula the same way East Slavic languages do (usually omits it). --Sir-nik (talk) 18:14, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

text:  Polish doesn't use zero copula. — JWilk (talk) 16:25, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  East Slavic? 

message: The section on the use of zero copula in English is confusing to me. 
Zero copula also appears in casual questions and statements like "You from out of town?"; "Enough already!" where the verb (and more) may be omitted due to syncope. Apart from syncope, the zero copula is probably not used productively in standard English.
What does syncope mean in this context? I searched and found Syncope (phonetics) which is defined as the omission of sounds from the interior of a word. But that makes no sense here. The author is clearly talking about the omission of whole words not just a sound internal to a word. Does someone know how to make this clearer? 
Or is syncope just being used to mean any removal of any amount of words/sounds/whatever for any reason? If that is the case it is basically a synonym for zero copula here. If so wouldn't a better paragraph be:
Zero copula also appears in casual questions and statements like "You from out of town?"; "Enough already!" where the verb (and more) may be omitted. Apart from similar compressed phrases used in casual speech, the zero copula is probably not used productively in standard English.
Nolandda (talk) 15:34, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Syncope? 

message: I thought Arabic uses the root K.N.N. as a copula, is this just Classical Arabic?
Oyd11 23:31, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's the verb KAN, but is is used only for clauses with a marked tense/aspectבוקי סריקי (talk) 19:39, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semitic 

message: How come this isn't included? Chinese doesn't usually include the copula for adjectives. John Riemann Soong 22:55, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is also true of Vietnamese. Though I am not familiar with Korean, if the copula is omitted for adjectives for Japanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese, perhaps this could be addressed more broadly of East Asian languages. Adavis444 (talk) 01:12, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chinese 

message: This article should be merged with Nominal sentence. Though technically they may seem like dealing with two slightly different topics, in fact it is just two facets of the same phenomenon, i.e. the possibility of having a non-verbal predicate. The existence or not of an overt copula is merely one linguistic parameter which is related to this, and thus the discussion will be benefited from the merger of the two articles under Nominal sentence. Anyhow, I would like to hear some comments before the actual merger. This discussion is moved to Talk:Nominal sentence#Merger Proposal
בוקי סריקי (talk) 19:42, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: No consensus for merge. SilkTork ✔Tea time 11:59, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger Proposal 

message: "Standard English exhibits a few limited forms of the zero copula. One is found in comparative correlatives like "the higher, the better" and "the more the merrier". However, no known language lacks this structure (aside from the invented language Toki Pona), and it is not clear how a comparative is joined with its correlate in this kind of copula."
Problem is the interpretation of "this structure" ...
Toki Pona has no verb for 'to be', so Zero Copula is it's basic structure. However Toki Pona has no comparative...
It seems "this structure" would mean "comparatives" ...
PieterJansegers (talk) 18:31, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Toki Pona mention in unclear context 

message: I hear this and similar in Western Pennsylvania. "The road needs fixed." This seems like a clearcut example of "zero copula". Is it? Jeh (talk) 12:06, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Needs fixed" 

message: Does Berber have any possible realizations if zero copula.  I find a wealth of knowledge that it is a copula-mandatory language much like English? 65.30.205.93 (talk) 15:49, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Berber 

message: Currently the Wikipedia article states "American Sign Language does not have a copula", which has long been the assumption, but I just ran across the following 2022 paper and webinar by UCSD linguists which shows that in fact ASL does possess a copula. Using archival footage from the 1910s they document early-stage transition from a pronoun function toward a copula, and then show how by the 2010s the copula use is widespread and predominant (although still not mandatory).
I am new to Wikipedia-editing and am not confident enough in the format to make this level of change, but I'm hoping by putting the information out there someone who knows the ropes can help ...?
published paper: https://www.linguisticsociety.org/sites/default/files/06_98.2Sampson.pdf
webinar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08BvihNGZRY OrchidFox (talk) 00:01, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  American Sign Language (new information)