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Concept
Copula (linguistics)
Summary
In linguistics, a copula (plural: copulas or copulae; abbreviated ) is a word or phrase that links the subject of a sentence to a subject complement, such as the word is in the sentence "The sky is blue" or the phrase was not being in the sentence "It was not being co-operative." 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 (in English, the verb "to be"), although some (like Spanish, Portuguese and Thai) have more than one, while others have none. While the term copula is generally used to refer to such principal verbs, it may also be used for a wider group of verbs with similar potential functions (like become, get, feel and seem in English); alternatively, these might be distinguished as "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:
The book is on the table.
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 an adverb or another adverbial phrase expressing time or location.
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