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Indo-european Copula
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GENERAL FEATURES

Main article: Copula


This verb has two basic meanings. In a less marked context it is a simple Copula (''I'm tired''; ''That's a shame!''), a function which in non-Indo-European languages can be expressed quite differently. In a more heavily marked context it expresses existence (''I think therefore I am''); the dividing line between these is not always easy to draw. In addition, many Indo-European languages use this verb as an Auxiliary for the formation of Compound (periphrastic) Tenses (''I'm working''; ''I was bitten''). Other functions vary from language to language. For example, although in its basic meanings, ''to be'' is a Stative Verb , English puts it to work as a dynamic verb in fixed collocations (''You are being very annoying'').

The copula is the most Irregular verb in many Indo-European languages. This is partly because it is more frequently used than any other, and partly because Proto-Indo-European offered more than one verb suitable for use in these functions, with the result that the daughter languages, in different ways, have tended to form Suppletive Verb Paradigms . This article describes the way in which the irregular forms have developed from a series of roots.


THE PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN ROOTS


The present indicative of this verb is generally reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European thus:

  • bhuH-''

  • bhuH-'' (where ''H'' stands for a Laryngeal of unknown quality) probably meant "to grow", but also "to become". This is the source of the English infinitive ''be'' and participle ''been'' (Germanic participles have the suffix in ''-an''), as well as, for example, the Gaelic future tense ''bithidh''. PIE /bh/ becomes Latin /f/, hence the Latin future participle ''futūrus'' and perfect tense ''fuī''; Latin ''fiō'' 'I become' is also from this root, as is the Greek verb , from which ''physics'' and ''physical'' are derived. Jasanoff (2003: 112) reconstructs the present indicative of this verb as follows:



  • wes-''

  • wes-'' may originally have meant "to live". The e-grade is present in the German participle ''gewesen'', the o-grade (''---wos-'') survives in English and Old High German ''was'', while the lengthened e-grade (''---wēs-'') gives us English ''were''. (The Germanic forms with /r/ result from .


  • h1er-''

  • h1er-'' meant "to move". This is probably the origin of the Old Norse present stem, the second person forms of which were borrowed into English as ''art'' and ''are''. Older authorities linked these forms with ''---h1es-'' and assumed Grammatischer Wechsel (/s/→/r/), which however would be difficult to explain in the present stem.


  • steh2-''

  • steh2-'' survives in English with its original meaning: "to stand". From this root comes the present stem of the so-called "substantive verb" in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, ''tá'' and ''tha'' respectively. In Latin, ''stō, stare'' retained the meaning "to stand", until local forms of Vulgar Latin began to use it as a copula in certain circumstances. Today, this survives in that several Romance languages use it as one of their two copulae, and there is also a Romance tendency for a past participle derived from ''---steh2-'' to replace that of the main copula.



THE RESULTING PARADIGMS


Hittite

  • .




Germanic languages

Main article: Germanic Verb


Old English kept the verbs ''wesan'' and ''bēon'' separate throughout the present stem, though it is not clear that they made the kind of consistent distinction in usage that we find, for example in Spanish. In the preterite, however, the paradigms fell together. Old English has no participle for this verb.


Latin and Romance languages


Main article: Romance Copula


In several modern Romance languages, the perfect is a composite tense formed with the participle as in English, but the old Latin perfect survives as a commonly-used Preterite in Spanish and Portuguese, and as a literary "past historic" in French, Italian and Catalan.

In Spanish, Catalan, Galician-Portuguese (and, to a lesser extent, Italian) there are two parallel paradigms, ''ser/èsser/essere'' from Latin ''esse'' on one hand, and ''estar/stare'' from Latin ''stare'', "to stand" on the other. The distinction between these is covered at .

There is a tendency for a past participle derived from ''stare'' (or more specifically its supine, ''statum'') to replace that of the main copula derived from ''esse''. For example, the French participle ''été'' comes from ''statum''. Again, see: for greater detail.

The table to the right has five verbs fully conjugated in the present tense, plus the first-person singular forms of other tenses. See for further data.





Balto-Slavic languages



Celtic languages

In the earliest Celtic Languages there was a distinction between the so-called substantive verb, used when the predicate was an adjective phrase or prepositional phrase, and the so-called '''copula''', used when the predicate was a noun. This contrast is maintained today in the Goidelic Languages but has been lost in the Brythonic Languages .

The conjugation of the Old Irish and Middle Welsh verbs is as follows:

  • ''stā-''. Welsh ''mae'' originally meant "here is" (cf. ''yma'' 'here'). The other forms are from the roots ---''es-'' and ---''bhū-''.


In modern Gaelic, person inflections have almost disappeared, but the negative and interrogative are marked by distinctive forms.

  • wel-'', also in Welsh ''gweled'', Germanic ''wlitu-'' "appearance", and Latin voltus "face"), then coming to mean "here is" (cf. French ''voici < vois ci'' and ''voilà < vois là''), later becoming a suppletive dependent form of ''at-tá''. Gaelic ''robh'' and Modern Irish ''raibh'' are from the perfective particle ''ro'' (''ry'' in Welsh) plus ''ba'' (lenited after ''ro'').



REFERENCES



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