Talk:Copula (linguistics)

message: I thought the original comments on the Turkish copula were inadequate and even inaccurate, so yesterday I replaced them.
Then I thought that what I had written would be better as a separate article; so I created that article and restored the original text of the Turkish section of the copula article.
I still think, for example, that it is incorrect to say that the verb "imek" appears in "maviyim".  As I infer from Lewis's grammar (and note in the new article), the "-(y)im" simply represents a pronoun.
It may be incorrect to speak of "imek" as a verb at all.  There used to be such a verb, but perhaps it doesn't really act at all like a verb now.  (It isn't negated as regular verbs are, for example.)  The ending "-dir", the present characteristic "-yor",---they used to be verbs, according to Lewis, but this information is perhaps not relevant to current Turkish.
But in case the point about "maviyim" is debatable, I have restored the original text, as I said.  Others may judge and make appropriate changes! David Pierce 07:04, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Turkish copula 

message: Please have a look at Talk:I am, and com,ent as neccessary. Cheers, Sam Spade 17:19, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  I am 

message: This isn't a huge point, but I have never heard anyone actually say "Она является красивой". It's true that являться (and its prefixed forms) have meaning related to being -- but that doesn't mean that you can use them as you would "to be". In general, I think the Russian section is incomplete: shouldn't something address the way есть interacts with existence? В этом городе есть театр "In this town there's a theater" with explicit "is" vs. В этом городе хорошие театры "In this town there are good theaters" or "In this town the theaters are good" with no verb at all. Is this "implied" copula, normal copula, or not copula? Someone should compare this page with Zero copula and make things more consistent and accurate. Tesseran 06:17, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Russian examples 

message: Why is there a mixture of italic and bold formatting in the English examples? Shouldn't there just be italics? I guess I'll be bold and change bold to italic.
Web-Crawling Stickler 21:45, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Italics and bold in examples 

message: abzorba 05:53, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  how to define and explain a term 

message: Regarding the Haitian section, the 3 listed (se, ye, zero) are fairly obvious, but if one looks at the list of copulas in English, it becomes obvious that are more Haitian words that belong in the copula category. One that comes to mind readily is "vin" or "devinir". Any thoughts on that that before changes to the category are made? Isaac Crumm 20:30, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Haitian

message: The article formerly contained this statement:
:In Toki Pona, if the subject is mi (I) or sina (you, sg.) there is no copula needed; otherwise, li is used just before the verb. For example: "sina pona" (you're good), "meli li pona" ((the) woman is good).
I don't think that's copula, though, since li is required before any verb, not just stative verbs that would be translated as adjectives in English, unless the subject it mi or sina. For example, you'd have mi tawa (I'm leaving) but meli li tawa (the woman is leaving). So I'd say that li is not a copula but rather a predicate introducer, or something like that.
(I think that i fulfils a similar purpose in Tok Pisin.) -- pne (talk) 13:17, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Toki Pona 

message: Desu redirects here. Should we have a top-disambiguation to Rozen Maiden? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 03:33, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see how it is relevant enough to deserve a mention on this article. "Desu" should redirect here because it is the appropriate article on its grammatical use. The internet meme is not notable in my opinion. --EmperorBrandon 20:08, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disambig? 

message: Copula's are also a mathematical concept used in statistics I believe.  So, I think the Copula definition shown here needs to be expanded further. 
206.195.193.254 15:18, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copula has additional meanings. 

message: The intro of this article reads as though the copula is not included in the predicate, which can consist of solely a subject complement (even, then, in languages without zero copula). So in the English sentence "Cheese is yellow", cheese would be subject, is copula and yellow predicate. And yet, the very first example of a predicate in Predicate (grammar) is "is yellow". The two articles seem to contradict each other. -- Jao 13:20, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relationship between copula and predicate 

message: The page currently uses both plurals (-ae and -as) indiscriminately. It would be better to stick to one or the other. Personally, I favour -ae. 91.105.5.207 19:24, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plural 

message: The article currently notes this:
:The history of the Chinese copula 是 is a controversial subject.
I haven't heard this to be the case anywhere.  Every source I've seen unambiguously states that the use of 是 as a copula developed from its use as a resumptive demonstrative pronoun in Classical Chinese, and I've added a citation for the sentence in the article that says so.  Is there a source that says otherwise?  I've added citation needed tags on those statements for now.  —Umofomia (talk) 22:38, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chinese 

message: I don't believe this example, given in the article, predicates identity as claimed: 'When the area behind the dam fills, it will be a lake.' This just seems like another example of class membership to me.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.106.23.59 (talk) 09:46, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Identity Predication 

message: Why do French and English use the accusative when there should actually be a nominative.. it's a bad habit, is illogical, and languages that haven't changed dramatically from its ancestral language like Latin, German, Swedish, Russian, Finnish always use the nominative as the predicate? --nlitement [talk] 21:46, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  "It is me" and "C'est moi" 

message: "The most well-known example would be former United States President Bill Clinton's statement "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."
"The most well-known example" seems absolute to me. Maybe "A notable example" would be better? 
"An example that highlights the flexibility of the word is ..."
"An example that highlights the ambiguity of the word is ..."
I just thought it was worth mentioning because the sentence distracted me.
KukJe (talk) 08:37, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I might suggest another example.  I'm concerned that this might be NPOV. 24.193.42.103 (talk) 05:48, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clinton 

message: Under the "Distinguishing between a copula and an action verb" header...  Isn't the sentence "Sam appears to be happy." using the verb 'appears' as an action verb?   Aren't all sentences that use "to be" in that way using action verbs?  Or is that sentence using 'to be' as a preposition maybe?  Here's something I started writing out for myself as I was trying to figure it out, but I can't figure out the actual rule:  
:"Note that this approach falters, in part, with the verb "to appear". In the sentence "Sam appears to be happy", "appears" is a copula. Yet, "seems" but not "is" can be substituted: "Sam is to be happy" means something else entirely.  EDITS:  Also, "Sam claims to be happy." results in the same faltering, though IS an action verb sentence, so one may be wiser to investigate the phrase "to be" when considering whether the "seem/is" approach may be useful.  (Note: "to" in the original sentence may be perceived as a preposition, just as "to be" can be considered the complete prepositional phrase.  Thus, "Sam appears to be happy." may be rewritten with out the prepositional phrase as "Sam appears happy."  Both "is" and "seems" will now substitute with out disrupting the meaning of the sentence.  However, in "Same claims to be happy." "to be" can not be omitted with out rendering the sentence unintelligible"Xetxo (talk) 22:49, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "appears to be" 

message: Someone, thinking it would be interesting, has redirected the "to be" page here. I was looking for a simple explanation of the 8-12 different forms of the word "to be" in English when I found this giant linguistic opus about copulas in other languages. 
This is interesting, but Wikipedia users should have the English "to be" page made up. Then an irresistible link can be made back here to copulas. 
But, as an average everyday user, I think that burying "to be" here is a bit inappropriate. This opus of a page made me work to hard to find the info I was looking for, and that is the interesting things about the "to be" words in English. For instance, where is the write up about the notable efforts to extricate all forms of "to be" from the English language. It may be here, but it is very hard to find in the few minutes I was willing to give to this project. 
As an intersting and humorous side note, I find it intimidating to write anything here among the linguists because I know the linguistic prescriptivists will nail me to the wall for my poor grammar. --68.193.161.227 (talk) 21:27, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "To be" in english:  

message: Cantonese uses 係 (Jyutping: hai6) instead of 是.
Absolutly, 係 and 是 are the same word.--刻意(Kèyì) 11:22, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Cantonese

message: I have removed from the lead section a suggestion that copula is 'also called a "passive verb"'. In linguistics the term passive verb may refer to a transitive verb in the passive voice. There is apparently also a popular usage of passive verb for verbs that "assert of the subject that it is acted on by something or suffers the action" (Oxford English Dictionary second edition, at "active, a. and n."). The OED calls this "less correct." In standard terminology this may be a type of intransitive verb rather than a copula. Cnilep (talk) 21:32, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I would have been livid if I had been around in 2010 to see the passive voice verbiage that you've removed. Sorry, "livid" is an exaggeration. I would have just shaken my head and laughed until removing the verbiage myself. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 17:56, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copula is not a "passive verb" 

message: The word cognate may have been used incorrectly in this article; I draw attention to section Copulas in other languages, subsection essence versus state, where it seems to me that it is suggested that "essence" and "state", in English, are cognates with words in Latin, whereas I believe that they be derived from Latin instead.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.183.128.252 (talk) 19:23, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cognates 

message: I have suggested a better translation for the expressions "O Bob é bom" and "O Bob está bom". The former would refer to Bob's character, thus translating as "Bob is good", as in a good man, whereas the latter refers to his wellbeing, thus "Bob is feeling well". Zelani (talk) 03:10, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Portuguese examples in ''essence versus state'' 

message: This comparison is misleading: 
"Another issue is verb agreement when both subject and predicative expression are noun phrases (and differ in number or person): in English the copula normally agrees with the preceding phrase, even if it is not logically the subject, as in the cause of the riot is (not are) these pictures of the wall. Compare Italian la causa della rivolta sono ("are", not è "is") queste foto del muro."
English word order is more rigid than Italian. You can't take "the dogs bite the man" and turn it into "the man bite the dogs". You have to say "the man is bitten by the dogs". This is passive construction - grammatically "the man" is the subject of the sentence, even though it is not the doer of the action, and the verb must agree with "the man". In Italian, you can do SVO or OVS, but the verb agrees with S.  So I am not sure what this example is meant to show, as it doesn't really have anything to do with the copula, per se.
To resolve this, I propose that either this example be removed, or an explanation be given about word order and passive construction.
Kirstenjpetersen (talk) 19:25, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I wouldn't get into passives, since the copula has no passive voice. Compare, though, "In my house is a dog" and "In my house are two dogs." These examples show that English word order is sometimes flexible enough to allow the subject of the copula to come after it. So it isn't entirely clear, from any word order constraint, that the subject of "The cause is the pictures" must necessarily be "the cause" rather than "the pictures". W. P. Uzer (talk) 20:38, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Misleading example with passive sentence 

message: The intro entertains a range of situations that would fall under the concept of "copula". Thereafter the article focus solely on the verb "be", describing "copulae" in other languages limited to "be", which is not the case. Rui Gabriel Correia (talk) 14:05, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The article seems to acknowledge that "copula" has both a wide and a narrow meaning. It spends most of its time on topics within the narrower meaning, perhaps because there is more that can be said about them. Of course you're welcome to try to improve it. W. P. Uzer (talk) 16:00, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intro and article are disjointed 

message: The last two examples in this section, using seems, adopt a different convention to the other examples, and a different convention from that stated before the examples. They have quotation marks round seems, have is in parentheses, and fail to put the predicate in italics. Would it be best just to remove them, or would someone who is expert care to bring them into line with the conventions of this section?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.90.114.42 (talk) 16:59, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other copulas - examples 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: MarydaleEd recommended speedy deletion for this antiquated term to which traditional grammaristas are quixotically inured. Liz rightly (IMHO) removed the speedy deletion tag. Although "copula" is not part of my own lexicon and I never spontaneously use the term, I nonetheless think it should remain as an article here to serve as a historical relic of linguistic terminology. Having said that, the thrust of this article is (also IMHO) slanted toward an undeserved sense of its modern relevancy. With one stroke of my magic wand, I would change this article to a stub and migrate the majority of its contents to the stative verb article, which has a boatload of its own issues, but at least has modern currency from a taxonomical POV. No: neither copula nor linking verb should be killed off here, but numerous reputable sources say both should be given their last rites. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 02:30, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Copula]]: A grammatical term that has long outlived its efficacy 

message: It's essentially the same as the definition of "linking verb" in that article.
      "a copula...is a word or phrase that links the subject of a sentence to a subject complement"
      "a linking verb is a verb that describes the subject by connecting it to a predicate adjective or predicate noun (collectively known as subject complements)." 2602:306:BC65:47C9:4C7D:1A05:F5CD:19E (talk) 04:44, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: No, because a linking verb is a verb and a copula can be something else than a verb. However, the article needs more and better info on copula particles and non-verb constructions. But it may be right that "linking verb" does not warrant a separate article. Replayful (talk) 22:46, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Initial definition problematic