1. Complexities in the Distribution of Copular Verbs

• Main Authors: Mark C. Baker, Nadya Vinokurova
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Sakha; Yakut; Siberia
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.529.9511; http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~mabaker/tense-and-copulas-Sakha.pdf

It is well-known that in many languages copular verbs are not needed with nonverbal predicates when the clause is in present tense, but are needed in other tenses. Hebrew (Rapoport 1987), Arabic (Benmamoun 2000), Russian, and Turkish (Wetzer 1996: 52, Stassen 1997: 46, Baker 2003) are relatively familiar languages that fit this profile. A less familiar example is Sakha (also known as Yakut), a Turkic language spoken in Siberia. (1) shows that no copular/auxiliary verb is needed in the present tense in Sakha; rather, subject agreement attaches directly to the predicate regardless of its category. The same morpheme representing present tense and first person agreement features,-bit and its allomorphs, can attach to all three lexical categories (Vinokurova 2005):1 (1) a. Bihigi bil-e-bit. Verb we know-AOR-1pS ‘We know’ b. Bihigi bytaam-myt. Adjective we slow-1pS ‘We are slow.’ c. Bihigi balyksyt-tar-byt. Noun we fishermen-PL-1pS ‘We are fishermen.’ In future tense, however, a copular verb is needed with adjectival and nominal predicates, although not with verbal predicates, as shown in (2).