Copula (linguistics)

In linguistics, a copula (plural: copulas or copulae; abbreviated .mw-parser-output .smallcaps{font-variant:small-caps}cop) is a term for a word that links the subject of a sentence to a subject complement, such as the word is in the sentence 'The sky is blue.' The word copula derives from the Latin noun for a 'link' or 'tie' that connects two different things.Question: 你的汽车是不是红色的？ nǐ de qìchē shì bú shì hóngsè de? 'Is your car red or not?'Response: 是的 shì de 'Is,' meaning 'Yes,' or 不是 bú shì 'Not is,' meaning 'No.' In linguistics, a copula (plural: copulas or copulae; abbreviated .mw-parser-output .smallcaps{font-variant:small-caps}cop) is a term for a word that links the subject of a sentence to a subject complement, such as the word is in the sentence 'The sky is blue.' The word copula derives from the Latin noun for a 'link' or 'tie' that connects two different things. A copula is often a verb or a verb-like word, though this is not universally the case. A verb that is a copula is sometimes called a copulative or copular verb. In English primary education grammar courses, a copula is often called a linking verb. In other languages, copulas show more resemblances to pronouns, as in Classical Chinese and Guarani, or may take the form of suffixes attached to a noun, as in Korean, Beja, and Inuit languages. Most languages have one main copula, although some (like Spanish, Portuguese and Thai) have more than one, and some have none. In the case of English, this is the verb to be. While the term copula is generally used to refer to such principal forms, it may also be used to refer to some other verbs with similar functions, like become, get, feel and seem in English (these may also be called 'semi-copulas' or 'pseudo-copulas'). The principal use of a copula is to link the subject of a clause to a subject complement. A copular verb is often considered to be part of the predicate, the remainder being called a predicative expression. A simple clause containing a copula is illustrated below: In that sentence, the noun phrase the book is the subject, the verb is serves as the copula, and the prepositional phrase on the table is the predicative expression. The whole expression is on the table may (in some theories of grammar) be called a predicate or a verb phrase. The predicative expression accompanying the copula, also known as the complement of the copula, may take any of several possible forms: it may be a noun or noun phrase, an adjective or adjective phrase, a prepositional phrase (as above) or another adverb or adverbial phrase expressing time or location. Examples are given below (with the copula in bold and the predicative expression in italics): The three components (subject, copula and predicative expression) do not necessarily appear in that order: their positioning depends on the rules for word order applicable to the language in question. In English (an SVO language) the ordering given is the normal one, but here too, certain variation is possible: