Talk:Zero copula

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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)Reply

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. [1] --X-Man 13:34, 8 July 2007 (UTC)Reply

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)Reply

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)Reply

Polish doesn't use zero copula. — JWilk (talk) 16:25, 28 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Polish uses zero copula/drops it by using to (this/that).

Examples:

To moja żona (This is my wife)

Piotr to mądry chłopak (Piotr is a smart boy)

Czy to oni? (Is that them?)

To koniec (It is over) Gość232 (talk) 09:44, 28 September 2024 (UTC)Reply

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)Reply

I thought Arabic uses the root K.N.N. as a copula, is this just Classical Arabic? Oyd11 23:31, 27 March 2006 (UTC)Reply

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)Reply

How come this isn't included? Chinese doesn't usually include the copula for adjectives. John Riemann Soong 22:55, 8 October 2006 (UTC)Reply

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)Reply

While reading to learn about the subject, the last para in the section "In English" struck me as having problems, but I'm not familiar enough with this to really say. I noted the para was recently added by an anon editor. The para reads:

Another example of a dropped copula occurs in certain dialects, often in the form of "need + past participle". If something is broken, one may say "it needs fixed", rather than "it needs to be fixed". An extension of this can be seen in such phrases as "the house needs cleaning", where the verb acting as a noun in the gerund. A rarer example would be "The groceries need bringing into the house." as opposed to "The groceries need brought into the house." or "The groceries need to be brought into the house.", in which case the gerund is less abstract and refers instead to the transitive nature of the verb.

So one thing is: what "certain dialects"? (I've never heard "it needs fixed".) I suppose that might be a zero copula, though, although the verb "needs" complicates things. The third sentence talks about an "extension", but the example "the house needs cleaning" doesn't seem to be a zero copula, just a normal subject-verb(needs)-object(cleaning). I suppose "cleaning" is a gerund, but the verb of the sentence is "needs", not a copula, and not omitted (as far as I can tell). Seems like the whole para needs substantial rework, or maybe just deletion. -R. S. Shaw (talk) 07:06, 6 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

........R. S. Shaw - Funny. I came in to say almost exactly the same thing about the exact same paragraph. I've never in my life heard anything that would suggest that wrong is a "dialect". You're totally correct about "the house needs cleaning" being an entirely valid sentence, complete with subject, predicate, and object. The opening sentences of the paragraph, however, almost give the impression that saying something such as "it needs fixed" is actually acceptable, as opposed to being a desecration of English that warrants a severe beating. <grin>

........The second paragraph, likewise, I have a couple of problems with. While omitting a copular verb is very rarely standard, there are occasional instances where it's allowed, as illustrated in the first paragraph: "The more, the merrier", for example. Other than that, though, it's only used casually, and only allowed with some interrogative statements, not declarative ones. For instance, "You crazy?" is nonstandard, but not technically incorrect. "You crazy!", on the other hand, isn't even nonstandard. It's just flat-out wrong. "Where you at?" is grating, but allowable. "Who she?" Unacceptable. Tsk, tsk, tsk... -=[ Alexis (talk) 06:12, 7 July 2011 (UTC) ]=-Reply

I see that the question of the "certain dialects" paragraph has been stalled almost a year. However, it is wrong on several points, and I suggest someone delete it. I will do so if no one else does in a week or so.
Here are more details on the reasons this paragraph is totally out of place.
1. The first example is a example of a dialectal variation on passive voice construction -- a totally different topic than Copula.
2. The next example, described as "an extension" of the first example, is perfectly grammatical standard English, and it is "Subjectless -ing participle as object" (Quirk, p 1189). In other words, the second example is verb complementation.
3. No reference is provided for these assertions.

Ref: Quirk, Greenbaum, et. al, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, (c) 2007

--Philologon (talk) 01:25, 28 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

"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)Reply

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)Reply

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)Reply

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)Reply

The link for the paper is dead. Is there an alternate link somewhere else? OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 20:21, 2 January 2025 (UTC)Reply