come --> copula: first summary

[Sebastian Nordhoff]

Dear all,
my query on developments of the copula has triggered a lot more 
responses than I had expected :-) I was interested in the use of words 
related to the verb 'to come' in structures like (1), or similar structures

(1) Se=ppe naama asàdhaathang Cintha Sinthani.
1s=poss name copula Chintha Sinthani
`My name is Chintha Sinthani.'


The predicate in (1) is stative; it does not entail any change of state 
(Actually, it is difficult to imagine how it could possibly be 
interpreted as dynamic). Few other languages seem to have a verb related 
to 'come' for this function. What many languages have is such a word for 
predicates of change of state, like English /become/. There seems to be 
a consensus that the grammaticalization path should be something like (2)

(2) come -> become -> be

The first part of this part is attested in the following languages:

* Rhaeto-Romance, some Italian dialects (Balthasar Bickel)
* German, English (Wolfgang Schulze, Paul Hopper)
* Yahgan (Tierra del Fuego, genetic isolate) (Jess Tauber)
* West-Flemish (Willy Vandeweghe )


The second (become->be), but without /become/ necessarily being derived 
from /come/ is attested in the following languages.

* Udi (East Caucasian) (Wolfgang Schulze)
* Several dialects of Romani (Viktor Elsik)

If we put these two developments together, we end up with (2).



The step from come->be without intermediate attestation of BECOME:

* In Yholmo, a Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal, the copular 'ohng-' is 
the word 'come', but this copular is only used 'in the sense of general 
quality or existence' (Hari 2006, p. 38) (Lauren Gawne).



I also asked for other grammaticalizations of come. Responses are

* Italian has a passive auxiliary from 'come' (Siva Kalyan, Susanne 
Michaelis, Anna Giacalone)
* The same is true for Ude (Wolfgang Schulze)
* Ku Waru (Chimbu-Waghi, Trans New Guinea) might use a come-verb for 
existentials, although this is not sure (Lila San Roque). This is 
discusssed in Rumsey (2002)
* Hinuq and to a limited extent Russian have an obligational 
construction involving COME (Diana Forker)
* Finnish, Estonian, Swedish use (be)come as a future auxiliary (Hannu 
Tommola)



The question about other copulas derived from motion verbs got the 
following responses:

* Spanish has suppletion/conflation of the preterit forms of the copula 
/ser/ and the motion verb /ir/ (fui, fuiste, fue etc). Ljuba Veselinova 
pointed out a paper by Matthew Juge on the development of this
* Archi has suppletion/conflation of COME and BE in the perfective 
(Michael Daniel)
* Arab, French, German, and English, have varieties of COME and TURN for 
BECOME (Moshe Daniel)
* I might add that Spanish also has quedarse 'to remain', volverse 'to 
turn into' and ponerse 'to put oneself into' as verbs related to motion 
which have acquired a meaning of 'become'


To put these responses in the context of Sri Lanka Malay: it seems 
common for COME to acquire 
mutative/ingressive/dynamic/change-of-state/resultative readings, which 
can in turn develop into copulas. The funny thing about Sri Lanka Malay 
is that the intermediate 'become'-state is not attested. Synchronically, 
/asàdhaathang/ can mean 'having come to a place' or 'COPULA', but it 
cannot mean 'to become'. For the latter concept /jaadi/ has to be used.

Thanks for all the answers
Sebastian




Rumsey, A. (2002). Men stand, women sit: on the grammaticalisation of 
posture
verbs in Papuan languages, its bodily basis and cultural correlates. In 
J. Newman
(Ed.), The linguistics of sitting, standing and lying, pp. 179–211. 
Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.

A. Giacalone Ramat , /On some grammaticalization patterns for 
auxiliaries/, in J.C.Smith & Delia Bentley (eds), /Historical 
Linguistics 1995/. /Vol.I: General issues and non-Germanic languages/. 
Amsterdam, Benjamins, 2000, 125-154