Indo-European copula

Look up Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₁es- in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

The root *h₁es- was certainly already a copula in Proto-Indo-European.

The e-grade *h₁es- (see Indo-European ablaut) is found in such forms as English is, Irish is, German ist, Latin est, Sanskrit asti, Persian ast, Old Church Slavonic ѥстъ (jestŭ).

The zero grade *h₁s- produces forms beginning with /s/, like German sind, Latin sumus, Vedic Sanskrit smas, etc.

In PIE, *h₁es- was an athematic verb in -mi; that is, the first person singular was *h₁esmi; this inflection survives in English am, Pashto yem, Persian am, Sanskrit asmi, Bengali first-person verb ending -ām, Old Church Slavonic есмь (esmĭ), etc.

This verb is generally reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European thus:[1]

The root *bʰuH- or *bʰuh₂- (which did not have ablaut variations in the protolanguage[2]) probably meant 'to grow', but also 'to become'.

This is the source of the English infinitive be and participle been. Also, for example, the Scottish Gaelic "future" tense bithidh; the Irish imperative bí, past bhí and future beidh; the Persian imperative bov, past bud and future bâš; and the Slavic infinitive, etc. for example Russian быть (byt’).

PIE *b^h became Latin /f/, hence the Latin future participle futūrus and perfect fuī; Latin fīō 'I become' is also from this root, as is the Greek verb φύω (phúō), from which physics and physical are derived.

This verb can be reconstructed as follows:[1]

The root *h₂wes- may originally have meant "to live".[1] The e-grade is present in the German participle gewesen, the o-grade (*wos-) survives in English and Old High German was, while the lengthened e-grade (*wēs-) gives us English were. (The Germanic forms with /r/ result from grammatischer Wechsel.) See Germanic strong verb: Class 5.

This has been claimed as the origin of the Old Norse and later Scandinavian languages' present stem: Old Norse em, ert, er, erum, eruð, eru; the second person forms of which were borrowed into English as art and are.[3] It has also been seen as the origin of the Latin imperfect (eram, eras, erat) and future tenses (ero, eris, erit).

However, other authorities link these forms with *h₁es- and assume grammatischer Wechsel (/s/→/r/), although this is not normally found in the present stem. Donald Ringe argues that the copula was sometimes unaccented in Pre-Proto-Germanic, which would have then triggered the voicing under Verner's law.[1] He explains the Germanic first person singular form *immi as such, deriving it from earlier *ezmi, since -zm-, but not -sm-, was assimilated to -mm- in Germanic (for which other evidence exists as well). Furthermore, the third person plural form *sindi (from PIE *h₁sénti) shows that this word, too, was unaccented. If the accent had been preserved, it would have become *sinþi, but that form is not found in any Germanic language. In this view, it is likely that stressed and unstressed varieties of the copula (with corresponding voiceless and voiced fricatives) existed side by side in Germanic, and the involvement of a separate root *h₁er- is unnecessary.

The Latin forms could be explained by rhotacism

The root *(s)teh₂- meant "to stand". From this root comes the present stem of the so-called "substantive verb" in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, tá and tha respectively. On the absence of the initial s- in Celtic, see Indo-European s-mobile.

In Latin, stō, stare retained the meaning "to stand", until local forms of Vulgar Latin began to use it as a copula in certain circumstances. Today, this survives in that several Romance languages (Galician-Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan) use it as one of their two copulae, and there is also a Romance tendency for a past participle derived from *steh₂- to replace the original one of the copula (this occurs in French, Italian and the main dialects of Catalan). See also Romance copula.

Although in Dutch, this verb retains its primary meaning of "stand", it is also used in an auxiliary-like function that only has a secondary meaning of "standing", for example: ik sta te koken ("I am cooking", literally "I stand to cook"). When it is not a full copula (it can normally only be used as an auxiliary with another verb), it does have shades of meaning that resemble that of the Italian sto cucinando ("I am cooking"). The intransitive verbs zitten ("to sit"), liggen ("to lie") and lopen ("to walk/run") are used in similar ways.

German "stehen" also exhibits a similar secondary meaning as a copula in certain locative phrases. For example, "Das Auto steht da" ("the car is over there" lit. "the car stands there").

In Swedish, which usually lacks gerund forms, the corresponding stå is often used similarly, along with sitta ("to sit"), ligga ("to lie") and gå ("to walk").

In Hindustani the past tense of the copula honā "to be" which are «tʰā», «tʰe», «tʰī» and «tʰī̃» are derived from Sanskrit «stʰā». Gujarati has a cognate verb «tʰavũ» "to happen"; cf. Bengali aorist «tʰā-» (to stay) as well.

In Persian istâdan means "to stand"

The Hittite verb "to be" is derived from the Indo-European root *h₁es-.

The Vedic Sanskrit verb as (to be) is derived from the Indo-European root *h₁es-.

bhū (to be) is derived from Indo-European *b^huH-.

In modern Hindi, as has developed into the present indicative forms of the verb होना (honā). The infinitive होना (honā) itself is derived from bhū. The verb होना (honā) is the only verb in Hindi to have the present indicative form, and the Imperfect Past form and for all the other verbs these forms do not exist but are formed using the imperfect past copula. Hindi uses Present Habitual forms to compensate for the loss of Present Indicative forms. The Habitual forms with the use of Present Indicative form of होना (honā) which works as the auxiliary verb form the Present Habitual Tense. Also, for all the verbs except होना (honā), there are no separate forms for the present and the future subjunctive but instead they both have a common form which is used to express both the present and the future subjunctive ideas.

The verb होना (honā) can be translated as «to be», «to exist», «to happen» and «to have». When the meaning of «to happen» is to be conveyed, Perfect Past is used and in all other cases the Imperfect Past is used.

The verbs in Hindi are gendered and numbered in general they agree with either the object or the subject of the sentence depending on the whether the sentence uses dative construction (quirky subject) or not. So, there are four possible forms of all verbs in Hindi, «honā», «hone», «honī» and «honī̃», the masculine singular form being the default dictionary form.

With regard to the function of the verb ‘to be’ as a copula, the most conspicuous feature of Modern Persian language is the evolution of an existential be, hast (exists), out of ast (is). In fact, when studying the forms and functions of ‘to be’, one might find certain characteristics specific to Persian that is worth pondering upon[4]— i.e. even without considering the diachronic evolution of Modern Persian language and its relation to Ancient Iranian languages (such as Old Persian and Avestan) whose usage of the verb ‘to be’ seems more close to Sanskrit. Paradoxically, despite the fact that Persian is apparently the only Indo-European language that has created an existential be out of the copula, it has simultaneously made an extreme use of the latter to produce a general paradigm for conjugating all Persian verbs.

Historically speaking, like most of Indo-European languages that make use of suppletive roots to denote ‘to be’, Persian integrates Proto-Indo-Eroupean (PIE) verbs *h₁es- (to be) and *b^huH (to grow> to become> to be). Hence, while Persian (Pers) infinitive būdan (to be) < PIE *b^huH forms the past stem of the verb (e.g. Pers būd- ‘was’) or acts as an auxiliary verb in formation of pluperfect of other verbs, its present tense is solely based on the derivatives of PIE *h₁es-. It is, in fact, from the declension of PIE *h₁es- (to be) that six present stems have been created and assigned to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person singular and plural to act as the present-tense conjugation of Pers būdan (to be), as shown in the following table.

As an example, in the following sentences, the present forms of the verb 'to be' are used as copulas or predicates:
"man doxtar-e to am; īn barādar-e man ast (a or e); to pedar-e man ī " (‘I am your daughter; this is my brother; thou art my father.’)

• Furthermore, as endings added to the stem of the verbs, these declensional forms have been grammatized to shape a general paradigm for the grammatical conjugation of all other verbs; as if any of these endings was once an auxiliary verb which evolved into an enclitic. This generalized conjugational paradigm is also applied to the past tense of the verb būdan (e.g. būd-am = literally: *‘(I) am was’→ ‘I was’; similarly būd-īm→ ‘we were’ etc.) (NB. An old declensional suffix -ad is still used instead of ast for 3rd person singular in present-tense and subjunctive conjugation of Persian verbs). However, what is linguistically notable, is the emergence of an existential be out of the copula, viz hast (exists) out of ast '(is). The evolution of this exceptional form, might go back to ancient Iranian languages, where ast could have two variants (cf. Avestan which has both as- and has- <PIE *h₁es- ‘be’). In the next phase, what we may call a pseudo-verb appeared, vis. the verb هستن hastan (to exist) has been analogically evolved from hast (exists) and has been conjugated like any other Persian verb (e.g. hast-am = literally: *‘(I) am existence’→ ‘I exist’).
• Nevertheless, created out of a wrong re-analysis of hast (exists), the restrictions of this pseudo-verb would show up as soon as one tries to either find its past-tense and/or negate it. Then, hastan (to exist) will simply turn into the familiar past-tense or negation of the aforementioned verb būdan (e.g. būd-am ‘I was’ vs. na-būd-am ‘I was not’) which acts just as a copula and its existential meaning has to be inferred like English ‘to be’. We may therefore deduce that neither hast (exists) nor its derived pseudo-verb hastan (to exist) can be negated at all, unless reduced to copulas! In other words, we do not have *ni-hast (it does not exist), but *ni-ast> nīst (it is not) (despite the fact that there was once such a verb as (a)nihistan in Middle Persian (Pahlavi)). It is also worth mentioning that in the early stages of the Classic (Modern) Persian, ni-am was the only way to say ‘I am not’. However, following a secondary analogy (similar to hast [exists] → hastan [to exist]) a negative pseudo-verb nīstan (not to be) was invented. Therefore, the mirror image of the pseudo-verb hastan is not a negation of the existential verb, but just a simple negative copula formed from ast (is) → *ni-ast→ nīst (is not)> nīstan ‘not to be’ which, like hastan, has only present-tense (e.g. nīst-am ‘I am not’).
• Finally, going back to the verb būdan, there is no doubt that it can only act as a copula, even if we look at its other forms which, as a heritage of the ancient Persian, has provided such moods as optative bād [<bovād ‘May it be!’], (wish to be), the potential (mood of probability) bov-ad (might be), and perhaps subjunctive/ conditional/ imperative bāš. (NB. However, bāš may be from another PIE root *wes- cf. English was).[5] In this regards, we may notice that the third person forms of bāš whose infinitive bāšīdan is conjugated to produce conditional, or substantial mood, has a tendency to replace ast (is), although considered wrong by educated/cultured Persians (e.g. ū mādar mī-bāš-ad [She is (a) mother.] instead of simply ū mādar ast).

The pseudo-verb هستن "hastan" (to exist) has only Simple Present Tense; in addition, it is truly and purely EXISTENTIAL only in the case of third person singular (hast). The fact is that the verb has been the product of this very case, as an "existential is", هست hast (she/ he/ it exists). For other persons the conjugation has to use enclitic copulas. These copulas are, in turn, derived from the declension of PIE *h₁es- (to be); as if the predicative To BE has been an auxiliary verb turned into enclitic, to provide six endings for 1st/2nd/ 3rd person (singular & plural) [table above]. However, as it is said, the 3rd person singular has no ending in the case of "hastan". That is to say that the existential هست hast (exists), which is like the alter-ego of the copula است ast (is), takes no ending, while the present stem of all other verbs take an archaic ending -ad in their 3rd person singular.

The Simple Past Tense conjugation of the verb بودن būdan (to be) is in fact formed by a double-copula, in the sense that both the stem and the ending are copulas: the past stem of the verb بود būd- is derived from PIE *b^huH-, while the endings are from the suppletive form of PIE *h₁es- (to be) with the exception of 3rd person singular which has zero ending for the all Persian verbs in the past-tense.

The Present Perfect conjugation of the verb بودن būdan (to be) is a perfect double copula paradigm, in the sense that it is produced by addition of all enclitic copulas to the past participle of the verb: būde (been).

The Ancient Greek verb eimi (I am) is derived from the Indo-European root *h₁es-.

The participles are based on the full-grade stem ἐσ- in Homeric, according to Smyth.

Except for Latin, the older Italic languages are very scarcely attested, but we have in Oscan set (they are), fiiet (they become), fufans (they have been) and fust (he will be), and in Umbrian sent (they are). This section will explain Latin, and the Romance languages that have evolved from it.

In Spanish, Catalan, Galician-Portuguese and to a lesser extent, Italian there are two parallel paradigms, ser/èsser/essere from Latin esse "to be" on one hand, and estar/stare from Latin stare, "to stand" on the other.

For simplicity, the table below has only the full conjugation of the present tense, and the first-person singular forms of some other tenses.

In several modern Romance languages, the perfect is a compound tense formed with the participle as in English, but the old Latin perfect survives as a commonly used preterite in Spanish and Portuguese, and as a literary "past historic" in French, Italian and Catalan.

There is a tendency for a past participle derived from stare (or more specifically its supine, statum) to replace that of the main copula derived from esse. For example, the French participle été comes from statum.

For further information, see the main Romance copula article.

Proto-Germanic retained the dual, but only in the first and second person.

• Old English kept the verbs wesan and bēon separate throughout the present stem, though it is not clear that they made the kind of consistent distinction in usage that we find, for example in Spanish. In the preterite, however, the paradigms fell together. Old English has no participle for this verb.
• The plural forms in Modern Swedish (indicated in brackets) were in common use in formal written language until the mid-20th century, but are now no longer in use except in deliberately archaising texts. The preterite subjunctive is also increasingly being replaced by the indicative.
• Dutch, like English, has abandoned the original second-person singular forms, replacing them with the second-person plural forms. However, while in English the old forms are still in limited and deliberately archaic use, in Dutch they have disappeared entirely and are no longer known or used at all. The forms listed in the plural are the historical plural forms, the 'jij' and 'gij' forms. Dutch formed a new plural pronoun 'jullie' with inflection similar to the 1st and 3rd person plural, but it would be redundant to list them here.

• In Russian, the present forms are archaic and no longer in common use, except for the third person forms, which are used in "there is/are" type phrases.
• In Ukrainian, the present tense forms of the verb "бути" have all but disappeared from contemporary language, except for the third person form which is used in existential phrases; єсть (jesť) is archaic and encountered only in poetry. All participles have turned into other parts of speech, future and past active participles becoming present and past active adverbial participle respectively,[6] and resultative pariciple becoming past tense of verbs.
• In Serbo-Croatian the forms jesam, jesi, jeste and so on are used as the basic form of the Present Tense "to be" (i.e. I am, you are etc.), while the forms budem, budeš, bude etc. are used only for the formation of the Future Perfect.
• In Bulgarian, forms бъда, бъдеш, etc. are not used by themselves but only in compound forms (future ще бъда, subjunctive да бъда). In this respect they closely follow the usage (and non-usage) of perfective verbs. As such it has its own forms for the aorist (бидох, биде, биде, бидохме, бидохте, 'бидоха), the imperfect (бъдех, бъдеше, бъдеше, бъдехме, бъдехте, бъдеха) and the resultative participle (бъдел). Another verb - бивам with fully regular conjugation type III paradigm - completes an aspect triple: imperfective съм, perfective бъда, secondary imperfective бивам. The perfective aorist has lost its original meaning and is now used only to form the compound conditional mood (бих чел = I would read). All participles except the resultative participle (бил) have lost their function and are now used as regular adjectives with changed meanings (същ = same, бивш = previous, ex-, бъдещ = future).

In Lithuanian, the paradigm būnu, būni, būna, etc. is not considered archaic or dialectal but rather a special use of the verb būti, to be, mostly used to describe repeated actions or states, or habits.

In the Celtic languages there is a distinction between the so-called substantive verb, used when the predicate is an adjective phrase or prepositional phrase, and the so-called copula, used when the predicate is a noun.

The conjugation of the Old Irish and Middle Welsh verbs is as follows:

The forms of the Old Irish present tense of the substantive verb, as well as Welsh taw, come from the PIE root *stā-. The other forms are from the roots *es- and *bhū-. Welsh mae originally meant "here is" (cf. yma 'here').

In modern Gaelic, person inflections have almost disappeared, but the negative and interrogative are marked by distinctive forms. In Irish, particularly in the south, person inflections are still very common for the tá/bhí series.

[note 1]

[7]

Gaelic (bh)eil and Irish (bh)fuil are from Old Irish fuil, originally an imperative meaning "see!" (PIE root *wel-, also in Welsh gweled, Germanic wlitu- "appearance", and Latin voltus "face"), then coming to mean "here is" (cf. French voici < vois ci and voilà < vois là), later becoming a suppletive dependent form of at-tá. Gaelic robh and Modern Irish raibh are from the perfective particle ro (ry in Welsh) plus ba (lenited after ro).

The present tense in particular shows a split between the North and the South. Though the situation is undoubtedly more complicated, King (2003) notes the following variations in the present tense as spoken (not as written according to the standard orthography):

		Affirmative (I am)		Interrogative (Am I?)		Negative (I am not)
		Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
North	First person	dw	dan	ydw?	ydan?	(dy)dw	(dy)dan
	Second person	—, (r)wyt	dach	wyt?	(y)dach?	dwyt	(dy)dach
	Third person	mae	maen	ydy?	ydyn?	dydy	dydyn
South	First person	rw, w	ŷn, —	ydw?	ŷn?	(d)w	ŷn
	Second person	—, (r)wyt	ych	wyt?	ych?	—	(ych)
	Third person	mae	maen	ydy?, yw?	ŷn?	dyw	ŷn

For example, the spoken first person singular dw i'n is a contraction of the formal written yr ydwyf fi yn . The Welsh F /v/ is the fricative analogue of the nasal /m/, the PIE suffix consonsant for the first person singular.

		Affirmative (I am)		Interrogative (Am I?)		Negative (I am not)
		Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Preterite	First person	bues	buon	fues?	fuon?	fues	fuon
	Second person	buest	buoch	fuest?	fuoch?	fuest	fuoch
	Third person	buodd	buon	fuodd?	fuon?	fuodd	fuon
Imperfect	First person	roeddwn	roedden	oeddwn?	oedden?	doeddwn	doedden
	Second person	roeddet	roeddech	oeddet?	oeddech?	doeddet	doeddech
	Third person	roedd	roeddyn	oedd?	oeddyn?	doedd	doeddyn
Future	First person	bydda	byddwn	fydda?	fyddwn?	fydda	fyddwn
	Second person	byddi	byddwch	fyddi?	fyddwch?	fyddi	fyddwch
	Third person	bydd	byddan	fydd?	fyddan?	fydd	fyddan

Bod also has a conditional, for which there are two stems. The bas- stem is more common in the North, and the bydd- stem is more common in the South:

		Affirmative		Interrogative		Negative
		Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
bydd-	First person	byddwn	bydden	fyddwn	fydden	fyddwn?	fydden?
	Second person	byddet	byddech	fyddet	fyddech	fyddet?	fyddech?
	Third person	byddai	bydden	fyddai	fydden	fyddai?	fydden?
bas-	First person	baswn	basen	faswn	fasen	faswn?	fasen?
	Second person	baset	basech	faset	fasech	faset?	fasech?
	Third person	basai	basen	fasai	fasen	fasai?	fasen?

The Classical Armenian present tense derives from PIE *h₁es- (cf. sg. h₁esmi, h₁essi, h₁esti; 3rd pl. h₁s-énti).[8]

The Albanian copula shows two distinct roots. The present jam ‘I am’ is an athematic root stem built from PIE *h₁es-. The imperfect continues the PIE imperfect of the same root but was rebuilt based on the 3rd person singular and plural. The perfect, on the other hand, comes from the thematic aorist of PIE *kʷelh₁- ‘turn’ (cf. Ancient Greek épleto ‘he turned’, Armenian eɫew ‘he became’, Old Irish cloïd ‘turns back, defeats’). Analogical or otherwise indirect reflexes are italicized below.