development of a copula from the verb 'to come'

[Paul Hopper]

And don't forget the English idiom "How come" as in "How come you're so
tired? = "why is it that...?", which gives a further clue as how a
reanalysis come > BE might occur.

Also in English: "go" = "become" works with a number of predicates,
including colors ("go red") and the semantic field of insanity ("go
crazy," "go bananas," "go postal"). It is auxiliary-like in "go hunting"
and "go missing" (these two should perhaps be separated).

As Wolfgang notes, much depends on how we assess the "equivalent" of a
copula in our different languages.

Paul







On Mon, December 21, 2009 15:21, Wolfgang Schulze wrote:
> Dear Sebastian,
> well, it depends from what you define as being a true copula. Nevertheless,
> think of English /become/ (that is /be-come/), or German /bekommen/ used
> as a process verb (or, in German, as an auxiliary to encode the passive
> diathesis when foregrounding an 'indirect object'). Also, in Udi (East
> Caucasian) there is a verb /baksun /functioning both
> in the sense of 'become' and 'be' (with certain tense forms). /baksun/
> probably has its parallel in Caucasian Albanian or 'Old-Udi' (~ 600 AD),
> where we have a verb /bAhesown/ (A is some kind of open o) meaning to move
> (/go, come/). I guess that there are many more examples in the
> languages of the world that have the concept of BECOME being derived from
> motion verbs such as go, come etc.  The step then towards a true copula is
> not too problematic, as shown e.g. by the Udi example. Best wishes,
> Wolfgang
>
>
> Sebastian Nordhoff schrieb:
>
>> 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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-- 
Prof. Dr. Paul J. Hopper
Senior Fellow
Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
Albertstr. 19
D-79104 Freiburg
and
Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of Humanities
Department of English
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213