Copulalinking

Copulalinking, also known as copula linking, is a linguistic phenomenon in which the subject of a clause is connected to a predicative expression through a copula. The copula is typically a form of the verb to be or another copular verb, and it may be overt or omitted. The term covers both the presence of a dedicated linking verb and cases where the connecting element is zero, depending on the language and context.

In English, the copula is overt and tense-marked: The cat is hungry. The copula may carry tense, person, or mood markers. In contrast, many languages feature a zero-copula in the present tense; for example, in Russian the predication the sky blue is often expressed without an explicit form of “to be.” Such languages rely on the noun or adjective and its morphology to convey predication without a separate linking word.

Copula linking also governs the class of predicates that can follow the copula. Predicative adjectives, predicative nouns, and certain prepositional or circumstantial phrases are common. Some languages require agreement between subject and predicate; others do not. In Japanese, copular forms such as da or desu link a nominal predicate or an adjectival predicate: Sore wa kirei desu, “That is beautiful.”

Typologically, copulalinking is central to studies of predication, copula absence, and the syntax of equivalence versus predication. It interacts with tense, aspect, mood, and information structure, and has been analyzed in cross-linguistic surveys as a variable feature of how languages encode predication and identity.