Copulas (in English, the verb to be) are conventionally defined functionally as a means of relating elements of clause structure, especially subject and complement, and considered to be semantically empty or meaningless. They have received relatively little attention from linguists. This book goes some way towards correcting this neglect. In doing so it takes issue with both accepted definition and description. The book presents an analysis of grammatical descriptions of more than 160 languages drawn from the language families of the world. The book shows that some languages have a single copu ... More

Copulas (in English, the verb to be) are conventionally defined functionally as a means of relating elements of clause structure, especially subject and complement, and considered to be semantically empty or meaningless. They have received relatively little attention from linguists. This book goes some way towards correcting this neglect. In doing so it takes issue with both accepted definition and description. The book presents an analysis of grammatical descriptions of more than 160 languages drawn from the language families of the world. The book shows that some languages have a single copula, others several, and some none at all. In a series of statistical analyses it seeks to explain why by linking the distribution of copulas to variations in lexical categorization and syntactic structure. The book concludes by advancing a comprehensive theory of copularization which it relates to language classification and to theories of language change, notably grammaticalization.