Meanings
Predicates formed using a copula may express identity – that the two noun phrases (subject and complement) have the same referent or express an identical concept:
-
- I only want to be myself.
- The Morning Star is the Evening Star.
They may also express membership of a class, or a subset relationship:
-
- She was a nurse.
- Dogs are carnivorous mammals.
Similarly they may express some property, relation or position, whether permanent or temporary:
-
- The trees are green.
- I am your boss.
- The hen is next to the cockerel.
- The children are confused.
Other special uses of copular verbs are described in some of the following sections.
Read more about this topic: Copula (linguistics)
Famous quotes containing the word meanings:
“The first green night of their dreaming, asleep beneath the Tree,/God said, “Let meanings move,” and there was poetry.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“You can’t write about people out of textbooks, and you can’t use jargon. You have to speak clearly and simply and purely in a language that a six-year-old child can understand; and yet have the meanings and the overtones of language, and the implications, that appeal to the highest intelligence.”
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980)
“Well, “slithy” means “lithe and slimy.” “Lithe” is the same as “active.” You see, it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)