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.
- Passive: Smlouva byla.
AUX
podepsána v Bílém domě. “The contract was signed in the White House.” - Copula: Smlouva byla.
VERB
podepsána červeným inkoustem. “The contract was signed in red ink.”
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:
- Lenka je skvělá. “Lenka is brilliant.”
- Lenka je v kondici. “Lenka is in shape.”
The following two will be parallel, too:
- Lenka je v kuchyni. “Lenka is in the kitchen.”
- Lenka zůstala v kuchyni. “Lenka stayed in the kitchen.”
Treebank Statistics (UD_Czech)
This relation is universal.
20711 nodes (1%) are attached to their parents as cop
.
17342 instances of cop
(84%) are right-to-left (child precedes parent).
Average distance between parent and child is 2.36217468977838.
The following 19 pairs of parts of speech are connected with cop
: ADJ-VERB (9162; 44% instances), NOUN-VERB (7522; 36% instances), VERB-VERB (2509; 12% instances), PRON-VERB (737; 4% instances), NUM-VERB (467; 2% instances), ADV-VERB (192; 1% instances), PROPN-VERB (67; 0% instances), PART-VERB (18; 0% instances), DET-VERB (17; 0% instances), SYM-VERB (4; 0% instances), ADJ-NOUN (3; 0% instances), ADJ-ADJ (2; 0% instances), NOUN-NOUN (2; 0% instances), NOUN-SYM (2; 0% instances), NUM-SYM (2; 0% instances), PART-PART (2; 0% instances), ADJ-PRON (1; 0% instances), NOUN-ADJ (1; 0% instances), PRON-ADJ (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]