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:
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- 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:
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- She was a nurse.
- Dogs are carnivorous mammals.
Similarly they may express some property, relation or position, whether permanent or temporary:
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- 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:
“Man cannot bury his meanings so deep in his book, but time and like-minded men will find them. Plato had a secret doctrine, had he? What secret can he conceal from the eyes of Bacon? of Montaigne? of Kant? Therefore, Aristotle said of his works, “They are published and not published.””
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“An amoeba is a formless thing which takes many shapes. It moves by thrusting out an arm, and flowing into the arm. It multiplies by pulling itself in two, without permanently diminishing the original. So with words. A meaning may develop on the periphery of the body of meanings associated with a word, and shortly this tentacle-meaning has grown to such proportions that it dwarfs all other meanings.”
—Charlton Laird (b. 1901)
“Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)