Verb-stagañ

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Er yezhoniezh e vez implijet an termen verb-stagañ (saoz: copula) evit komz eus ur verb implijet evit liammañ rener ur frazenn ouzh prezegad ar frazenn. Verboù amreizh-tre eo ar verboù-stagañ e meur a yezh, en o zouez ar verboù indezeuropek.

Un arc'hwel hag a denn da framm kevreadurezhel eo hini ar verboù-stagañ neuze kentoc'h evit reiñ titour semantikel diwar-benn un ober pe ur stad, da skouer:

"Kelennerez eo ma mamm"

PREZEGAD eo RENER

Alies a-walc'h e implijer an tremen "verb-stagañ" en un doare ledan evit ober dave da verb-stagañ pennañ ar yezh bennak, da lâret eo "bezañ" e brezhoneg. Ha ret eo kompren e c'hell bezañ implijet verboù evel "bezañ" e degouezhioù ma ne dalvzont ket da verboù-stagañ dre ma ne liammont ket ar rener ouzh ar prezegad, da skouer:

• As an auxiliary verb:
  • To form the passive voice: "I was told that you wanted to see me"
  • To add continuous aspect to tenses: "It is raining"
• Meaning "to exist": "I want only to be, and that is enough."

Verboù-stagañ all a c'hell bezañ implijet ivez avat ouzhpenn ar verb-stagañ pennañ-se pe verboù implijet gwezh ha gwezh all evel verboù-stagañ, da skouer "erruout" e frazennoù evel "Erru eo bras".

Yezhoù zo a ra hep verboù-stagañ ebet pe hep verboù-stagañ e degouezhioù yezhadurel resis (Sellit ouzh "Verb-stagañ mann").

Daoust ha ma vez implijet verboù pe elfennoù verbheñvel evit liammañ ar rener ouzh ar prezegad e c'hell yezhoù zo implijout rummadoù yezhadur all.

Bez' e c'heller isrannañ ar verboù-stagañ hervez o implij resis er frazenn:

• Identity: "I only want to be myself." "When the area behind the dam fills, it will be a lake." "The Morning Star is the Evening Star." "Boys will be boys."

• Class membership. To belong to a set or class: "She could be married." "Dogs are canines." "Moscow is a large city." Depending on one's point of view, all other uses can be considered derivatives of this use, including the following non-copular uses in English, as they all express a subset relationship.

• Predication (property and relation attribution): "It hurts to be blue." "Will that house be big enough?" "The hen is next to the cockerel." "I am confused." Such attributes may also relate to temporary conditions as well as inherent qualities: "I will be tired after running." "Will you be going to the play tomorrow?" but please note that a linking verb has nothing to do with these so called "Be"- verbs.(see below)

Copulas in other languages Languages tend to use copulas in quite different ways.

• Turkish

Unlike Indo-European languages, being an extremely regular agglutinative language, Turkish forms its "being" not as a regular verb, rather as an auxiliary verb denoted as "i-mek" which shows its existence only through suffixes to predicates which can be nouns, adjectives or arguably conjugated verb stems.

In the third person singular, just like in Hungarian or Russian, zero copula is the rule.

For example:

• Deniz mavi. = "[The] sea [is] blue" (the auxiliary verb "i-mek" is implied only)
• Ben maviyim = "I am blue" (the auxiliary verb "i-mek" appears in "(y)im".)

• Chinese

In Chinese languages, both states and qualities are generally expressed with stative verbs with no need for a copula, e.g. in Mandarin, "to be tired" (累 lèi), "to be hungry" (饿 è), "to be located at" (在 zài), "to be stupid" (笨 bèn) and so forth. These verbs are usually preceded by an adverb such as 很 hěn ("very") or 不 bù ("not").

Only sentences with a noun as the complement (e.g. "this is my sister") use the verb "to be": 是 shì. This is used frequently: for example, instead of having a verb meaning "to be Chinese", the usual expression is "to be a Chinese person", using 是 shì. Other sentences use adjectives plus the nominaliser 的 de, e.g. 这是红的 zhè shì hóng de "this is [a] red [one]".

• Indo-European languages

In Indo-European languages, the words meaning "to be" (originating in stem *es) often sound similar to each other. Due to the high frequency of their use, their inflection retains a considerable degree of similarity in some cases. Thus, for example, the English form is is an apparent cognate of German ist, Latin est and Russian jest', in spite the fact that the Germanic, Italic, and Slavic language groups split at least three thousand years ago.

A feature of most Romance languages is the coexistence of two different verbs meaning "to be", the main one from the Latin sum, and a secondary one from sto (see Romance copula). The difference is that the former usually refers to essential characteristics, whilst the latter refers to states and situations, e. g. "Bob is old" versus "Bob is well". (Note that the English words just used, "essential" and "state", are also cognate with the Latin roots esse and stare.)

	"Bob is old."	"Bob is well."
Italian	Bob è vecchio.	Bob sta bene.
Spanish	Bob es viejo.	Bob está bien.
Portuguese	O Bob é velho.	O Bob está bem.

In some cases, the verb itself changes the meaning of the adjective/sentence. The following examples are from Portuguese:

ser	estar
O Bob é velho.	O Bob está velho.
"Bob is old."	"Bob has grown old."
O Bob é parvo.	O Bob está parvo.
"Bob is silly."	"Bob is acting silly."
O Bob é bom.	O Bob está bom.
"Bob is good."	"Bob is well."

In Spanish, the quite high degree of verbal inflection, plus the existence of two copulae (ser and estar), means that there are 105 separate forms to express the eight of English, and one of Chinese.

In certain languages there are not only two copulae but the syntax is also changed when one is distinguishing between states or situation and essential characteristics. For example, in Irish, describing the subject's state or situation typically uses the normal VSO ordering with the verb bí. The copula is, which is used to state essential characteristics or equivalences, requires a change in word order so that the subject does not immediately follow the copula (see Irish syntax).

In Slavic languages, a similar distinction is made by putting a state in the instrumental case, while characteristics are in the nominative. This is used with all the copulas (e.g. "become" is normally used with the instrumental). It also allows the distinction to be made when the copula is omitted (zero copula).

• Georgian and German

Just like in English, the verb "to be" (qopna) is irregular in Georgian; different verb roots are employed in different tenses. The roots -ar-, -kn-, -qav-, and -qop- (past participle) are used in the present tense, future tense, past tense and the perfective tenses respectively. Examples:

Masc'avlebeli var ("I am a teacher")

Masc'avlebeli viknebi ("I will be a teacher")

Masc'avlebeli viqavi ("I was a teacher")

Masc'avlebeli vqopilvar ("I have been a teacher")

Masc'avlebeli vqopiliqavi ("I had been a teacher")

Note that in the last two examples (perfect and pluperfect) two roots are used in one verb compound. In the perfective tense, the root qop (which is the expected root for the perfective tense) is followed by the root ar, which is the root for the present tense. In the pluperfective tense, again, the root qop is followed by the past tense root qav. This formation is very similar to German. In German, the perfective and the pluperfective are expressed in this way:

Ich bin Lehrer gewesen ("I have been a teacher", literally "I am a teacher been")

Ich war Lehrer gewesen ("I had been a teacher", literally "I was a teacher been")

Here, gewesen is the past participle of sein ("to be") in German. In both examples, just like in Georgian, this participle is used together with the present and the past forms of the verb in order to conjugate for the perfect and the pluperfect tenses.

Siouan languages

In Siouan languages like Lakota, in principle almost all words - according to their structure - are verbs. So, not very unlike in Lojban (see below), not only (transitive, intransitive and so-called 'stative') verbs but even nouns often behave like verbs - and do not need to have copulas. E.g. _wicasa_ [wicha's^a] - man/adult male, to-be-a-man -> wimacasa/winicasa/he wicasa (I am/you are/he is a man). Yet, there also is a verb (copula) _heca_ [he'cha] (to be a such) that in most cases is used: "wicasa hemaca/henica/heca" (I am/you are/he is a man). So, in order to express that I am a doctor of profession, I have to say: "pezuta wicasa hemaca" [phez^u'ta wicha's^a hema'cha]. But in order to express that I'm THE doctor (say, that had been phoned to help), I'd have to use another copula _(i)ye_ (to be the one): "pezuta wicasa (kin) miye lo" (medicine-man DEF ART I-am-the-one MALE ASSERT).

In order to refer to space (e.g. Robert is in the house), various verbs are used as copula, e.g. _yankA_ [yaNka'] (lit.: to sit) for humans, _han/he_ [haN'/he'] (to stand upright) for inanimates of a certain shape. So, "Robert is in the house" could be translated as "Robert timahel yanke (yelo)", whereas "there's one restaurant next to the gas station" translates as "owotetipi wigli-oinazin kin hel isakib wanzi he".

• Japanese

Japanese has copulas which would most often be translated as one of the so-called be-verbs of English. The Japanese copula has many forms. The words da and desu are used to predicate sentences, while na and de are used within sentences to modify or connect.

Japanese sentences with copulas most often equate one thing with another, that is, they are of the form "A is B." Examples:

• 私は学生だ。Watashi wa gakusei da. "I am a student." (lit., I TOPIC student COPULA)
• これはペンです。Kore wa pen desu.. "This is a pen." (lit., this TOPIC pen COPULA-POLITE)

The difference between da and desu is simple: desu is more formal and polite than da. Thus, the two sentences below are identical in meaning and differ only in the speaker's politeness to the addressee.

• あれはホテルだ。Are wa hoteru da. "That's a hotel." (lit., that TOPIC hotel COPULA)
• あれはホテルです。Are wa hoteru desu. "That is a hotel." (lit., that TOPIC hotel COPULA-POLITE)

Japanese sentences may be predicated with copulas or with verbs. However, desu may not always be a predicate. In some cases, its only function is to make a sentence predicated with a stative verb more polite. However, da always functions as a predicate, so it cannot be combined with a stative verb, because sentences need only one predicate. See the examples below.

• このビールはうまい。Kono bīru wa umai. "This beer is good." (lit., this beer TOPIC be-tasty)
• このビールはうまいです。Kono bīru wa umai desu. "This beer is good." (lit., this beer TOPIC be-tasty POLITE)
• ^*このビールはうまいだ。^*Kono bīru wa umai da. This is unacceptable because da may only serve as a predicate.

Japanese also has two verbs corresponding to English "to be": aru and iru. They are not copulae but existential verbs. Aru is used for inanimate objects, including plants, while iru is used for people and animals, though there are exceptions to this generalization.

• 本はテーブルにある。Hon wa tēburu ni aru. "The book is on a table."
• キムさんはここにいる。Kimu-san wa koko ni iru. "Kim is here."

There are several theories as to the origin of desu; one is that it is a shortened form of であります (de arimasu), used sometimes in writing and more formal situations. Another form, でございます (de gozaimasu which is the formal version of であります or である), is also used in some situations and is very polite.

です "desu" may be pronounced っす "ssu" in colloquial speech. In Kansai-ben, the copula is often replaced with ya.

• Existential usage

The existential usage of "to be" is distinct from and yet, in some languages, intimately related to its copulative usage. In language as opposed to formal logic, existence is a predicate rather than a quantifier, and the passage from copulative to existential usage can be subtle. In modern linguistics one commonly speaks of existential constructions - prototypically involving an expletive like there - rather than existential use of the verb itself. So for example in English a sentence like "there is a problem" would be considered an instance of existential construction. Relying on unified theory of copular sentences, it has been proposed that there-sentences are subtypes of inverse copular sentences (see Moro 1997 and "existential sentences and expletive there" in Everaert et al. 2006 for a detailed discussion of this issue and a historical survery of the major proposals).

For example:

• Japanese: 吾輩は猫である。名前はまだない。 Wagahai wa neko de aru. Namae wa mada nai – I am a cat. As yet, I have no name. — Soseki Natsume
• English: To be or not to be, that is the question. — William Shakespeare
• English: [Why climb Mount Everest?] Because it is there. — George Mallory
• Russian: Страна, которую ищут дети, есть [Strana, kotoruju ishchut djeti, jest'] – That land we yearn for in our childhood is there. — Prishvin
• French: Je pense, donc je suis. – I think; therefore, I am. — Descartes
• Latin: Cogito ergo sum. — I think; therefore, I am. — Descartes
• Hungarian: Gondolkodom, tehát vagyok. – I think; therefore, I am. — Descartes
• Turkish: Düşünüyorum, öyleyse varım. – I think; therefore, I am. — Descartes

Other languages prefer to keep the existential usage entirely separate from the copula. Swedish, for example, reserves vara (to be) for the copula, keeping bli (to become) and finnas (to exist) for becoming and existing, respectively.

• Swedish: Vem vill bli miljonär? — Who wants to be a millionaire?. — Bengt Magnusson
• Swedish: Varför bestiga Mt. Everest? Därfor att det finns där. — Why climb Mt. Everest? Because it is there. — George Mallory