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cop: copula

A copula is the relation between the nominal predicate (přísudek jmenný) and the copular verb být “to be” (or its variants bývat, bývávat). The verb stát se “to become”, despite being counted among copular verbs by some authors, is not analyzed as cop.

We normally take a copula as a dependent of its complement (the nominal predicate). The nominal predicate is usually a noun, an adjective or a participle.

Note that the passive participle may be also used as nominal predicate with copula. Hence it may be difficult to distinguish a passive construction from a copula construction. The former focuses on the process while the latter emphasizes the result.

The nominal predicate may also be expressed using a prepositional phrase. However, not every occurrence of být “to be” with a prepositional phrase is a copula with a nominal predicate. Phrases expressing the state of the subject are predicates, e.g. Lenka je v kondici “Lenka is in shape”. In contrast, prepositional phrases specifying location are not predicates. The verb být is understood as the existential “to be” in such cases, and thus it itself is the predicate, not just a copula.

Thus the following two sentences receive parallel analyses:

The following two will be parallel, too:


Treebank Statistics (UD_Czech)

This relation is universal.

20598 nodes (1%) are attached to their parents as cop.

17238 instances of cop (84%) are right-to-left (child precedes parent). Average distance between parent and child is 2.36270511700165.

The following 10 pairs of parts of speech are connected with cop: ADJ-VERB (9163; 44% instances), NOUN-VERB (7524; 37% instances), VERB-VERB (2419; 12% instances), PRON-VERB (735; 4% instances), NUM-VERB (466; 2% instances), ADV-VERB (192; 1% instances), PROPN-VERB (67; 0% instances), DET-VERB (17; 0% instances), PART-VERB (11; 0% instances), SYM-VERB (4; 0% instances).


Treebank Statistics (UD_Czech-CAC)

This relation is universal.

8149 nodes (2%) are attached to their parents as cop.

7037 instances of cop (86%) are right-to-left (child precedes parent). Average distance between parent and child is 2.18591238188735.

The following 32 pairs of parts of speech are connected with cop: ADJ-VERB (3376; 41% instances), NOUN-VERB (2534; 31% instances), VERB-VERB (1175; 14% instances), PRON-VERB (393; 5% instances), ADV-VERB (374; 5% instances), NUM-VERB (157; 2% instances), SYM-VERB (47; 1% instances), ADJ-SYM (11; 0% instances), PART-VERB (11; 0% instances), DET-VERB (10; 0% instances), PROPN-VERB (8; 0% instances), ADJ-ADJ (7; 0% instances), VERB-AUX (7; 0% instances), NOUN-NOUN (6; 0% instances), ADJ-NOUN (5; 0% instances), VERB-SYM (4; 0% instances), ADJ-AUX (3; 0% instances), ADV-AUX (3; 0% instances), NOUN-SYM (3; 0% instances), VERB-NOUN (3; 0% instances), ADJ-ADV (1; 0% instances), ADJ-CONJ (1; 0% instances), INTJ-VERB (1; 0% instances), NOUN-ADJ (1; 0% instances), NOUN-NUM (1; 0% instances), NUM-SYM (1; 0% instances), PRON-AUX (1; 0% instances), SCONJ-ADJ (1; 0% instances), SCONJ-VERB (1; 0% instances), SYM-NOUN (1; 0% instances), SYM-SYM (1; 0% instances), VERB-ADV (1; 0% instances).


Treebank Statistics (UD_Czech-CLTT)

This relation is universal.

437 nodes (1%) are attached to their parents as cop.

402 instances of cop (92%) are right-to-left (child precedes parent). Average distance between parent and child is 2.29061784897025.

The following 13 pairs of parts of speech are connected with cop: ADJ-VERB (177; 41% instances), NOUN-VERB (133; 30% instances), VERB-VERB (82; 19% instances), ADJ-X (15; 3% instances), VERB-X (12; 3% instances), PRON-VERB (4; 1% instances), ADJ-NOUN (3; 1% instances), VERB-AUX (3; 1% instances), ADV-VERB (2; 0% instances), NOUN-NOUN (2; 0% instances), VERB-NOUN (2; 0% instances), DET-VERB (1; 0% instances), NUM-VERB (1; 0% instances).


cop in other languages: [bg] [cs] [de] [el] [en] [es] [eu] [fa] [fi] [fr] [ga] [he] [hu] [it] [ja] [ko] [sv] [u]
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