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Dear Peter,
<p>I do not dare to declare that the grammaticalization of personal pronouns
as copulae is a very common type, however, I came across the same e.g.
in Udi (South East Caucasian): Here we have:
<p>e%le%m-ux kala-ne
<br>donkey-PL big-cop:3sg
<br>'the donkeys are big'
<p>The citic -ne stems from the deictic paradigm also used for anaphers
(< *adnominal deixis<i>-no</i>). For the speech act participants, personal
pronouns (in parts modified) are used, e.g.
<p>[zu] kala-zu
<br>[I] big-1sg
<br>'I am big'
<p>[un] kala-n[u]
<br>[you:sg] big-2sg
<p>[yan] kala-yan
<br>[we] big-1pl
<p>[va%n] kala-nan
<br>[you:pl] big-2pl
<p>Something the like holds (according to what I know) e.g. for many Turkic
and Iranian languages. Tell me in case you need those data, I will send
them directly to you...
<p>Best wishes,
<br>Wolfgang
<br>
<p>Peter Trudgill schrieb:
<blockquote TYPE=CITE>Cypriot Greek has developed a present tense copula,
presumably under
<br>the influence of Greek, in which the copula appears to have developed
<br>out of the personal pronouns:
<p>li xmir énne kbar 'the donkeys are big'
<p>Is this a very common type of diachronic development?
<br>--
<br>Prof. Peter Trudgill
<br>Chair of English Linguistics
<br>University of Fribourg
<br>Misericorde
<br>1700 Fribourg
<br>Switzerland
<p>Tel.: +41-26-300 7907
<p>Fax: +41-26-300 9787
<br>Sec'y: +41-26-300 7902
<br>Assts.: +41-26-300 7905/7909
<p>Home: +41-21-728 1916</blockquote>
<p>--
<br>Prof. Dr. Wolfgang M. Schulze
<br>IATS - Institute for General Linguistics and Language Typology
<br>[Institut fuer Allgemeine und Typologische Sprachwissenschaft]
<br>Dept. II [Communication and Languages - Kommunikation und Sprachen]
<br>F 13/14 - Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen
<br>Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
<br>D-80539 Muenchen
<br>Tel.: ++49-(0)89-21802484 (Secretary)
<br> ++49-(0)89-21805343 (Office)
<br>Fax: ++49-(0)89-21805345
<br>Email: W.Schulze@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
<br>Web: <A HREF="http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/ats_eng.html">http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/ats_eng.html</A>
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