Talk:Zero copula

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[edit] East Slavic?

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)
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)
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)

[edit] Semitic

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

[edit] Chinese

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