development of a copula from the verb 'to come'

Sebastian Nordhoff sebastian_nordhoff at EVA.MPG.DE
Mon Dec 21 16:33:21 UTC 2009


Dear colleagues,
I am looking for languages with a copula where this copula derives from the lexical verb meaning 'to come'. One such language is Sri Lanka Malay where the copula /asàdhaathang/ is clearly related to the verb /dhaathang/ 'to come' (The copula is homonymous with the 'conjunctive participle', to be precise). 

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

This seems to be a rather unusual diachronic source; it is more common for the copula to develop from an existential or a pronoun. I would appreciate if list members could point out languages with similar developments. I would also be happy to hear about less-than-perfect matches, e.g. grammaticalization of 'come' to an auxiliary, or grammaticalization of another motion verb to a copula. I have consulted The World Lexicon of Grammaticalization (Heine & Kuteva 2002), and the closest match I could find was come-->resultative as found in some Creole languages (Seychellois, Guyanese CF, Fa d'Ambu).

Thanks in advance
Sebastian



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