From: Jonathan Robie (jonathan.robie@sagus.com)
Date: Thu Jul 29 1999 - 07:56:45 EDT
<x-flowed>At 02:43 PM 7/28/99 -0700, shawn wrote:
>First Parsons' referred to it as a stative verb, which www.m-w.com defines
>as "expressing a state, condition, or relation".
>
>Black's text referred to it as a copulative verb, which he further defines
>as "...(from Lat. copulo, `I link together') because it links subject and
>predicate..."
>
>So which is more accurate? Are they basically saying the same thing or is
>there a slight difference between how they look at the verb?
There is no conflict between these two views - consider the following sentence:
John is old.
In this sentence, "is" connects the subject "John" to the predicate "old".
It also expresses a condition - in fact, what it does in this case is
express the proposition that the predicate is a state or condition which
applies to the subject.
Jonathan
-- Jonathan Robie R&D Fellow, Software AG jonathan.robie@sagus.com--- B-Greek home page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu] To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-329W@franklin.oit.unc.edu To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu
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