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Normally, copulas hold a subject complement (or a predicate in any case). Example.

The sky became clear.
I am ill.

But what is in the definition of a lexical verb that makes copulas lexical verbs?

As the comments point out, I ought to be more specific.

I have recently read an article of French linguist Pollock.

Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1989. Verb movement, UG, and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20, 365-424.

He claims that the differences between English and French with respect to syntax of sentence negation, questions, adverbs, floating quantifiers and “quantification at a distance” are correlated. He proves this in various ways. One thing that bothers me, though, is that he seems to contrast copulae and auxiliaries, but in such a strange way I have never heard of before.

Consider the following examples (from Pollock, aforementioned).

French infinitives:

1. être (to be) and avoir (to have)

  • Ne pas être heureux est une condition pour écrire des romans.
  • Ne to not be happy is a prerequisite for writing novels.
  • N'être pas heureux est une condition pour écrire des romans.
  • 'Ne to be not happy ...'

As you can see, the negation in French can be in front or after the verb (a copula). More correctly, it is the verb that moves to Infl - in front of the negation - or not. Verb Movement is possible, but not obligatory in this case.

Then Pollock continues by saying "Let us now consider lexical verbs. The situation here contrasts sharply with the paradigm [in the previous examples]."

2. Lexical verbs

  • Ne pas sembler heureux est une condition pour écrire des romans.
  • 'Ne not seem happy is a prerequisite for writing novels.'
  • *Ne sembler pas heureux est une condition pour écrire des romans.
  • 'Ne to seem not happy ...'

(* meaning "not considered standard language" or simply not possible)

This tendency in infinitives "sort-of" aligns with English tensed clauses.

  • He is not happy.
  • *He seems not happy.
  • He was not arredsted.
  • *He got not arrested.

"It appears that although Verb Movement can apply to auxiliaries and lexical avoir, it cannot apply to lexical verbs in infinitives in French."

Without going further into detail, it struck me that Pollock seems to make a distinction between to be (and French être) - which seems to be an auxiliary, according to his theory - and to seem (and French sembler) as a lexical verb. Even though, my gut tells me that être in 1. and in He is not happy is as good a copula as sembler or *He seems not happy..

Bram Vanroy
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    Are you only asking about English? The current sole answer seems to deal with the various functions of the English copula, but there could be even greater variety in other languages. I would suggest fleshing out your question a bit. Generally there should be an equivalent amount of effort put into question and answer and so far the answer show more effort and the question shows less focus. I'm very interested in this topic you've brought up by the way, so I'm not just nitpicking. (-: – hippietrail Oct 20 '13 at 16:11
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    @hippietrail You are right. I added more information. Please see my edit. – Bram Vanroy Oct 21 '13 at 08:54
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    I've edited my answer to reply to your edit: some people only consider be to be a true copula. – Cerberus Oct 21 '13 at 10:30

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[Edit: Some people consider only be/être a copula; verbs like seem/sembler, become/devenir, etc. they consider lexical verbs. I believe their reason is that they consider only be devoid of any non-grammatical function, whereas seem also means "affect the perception of others", and become "change".

I have only ever encountered this narrow sense in certain branches formal linguistics of the Anglo-Saxon school, not in other disciplines or places, but it has some merit, and perhaps it is more widespread than I know. It is something to take into account when you see someone talking about "copulae"; if only writers always had the time to define their terms... ]

The idea is that lexical verbs express more than a mere grammatical function, while auxiliary verbs express only grammatical function, such as tense, number, or modality. Some consider copulae lexical verbs, others do not.

I can't see you.

The auxiliary modal verb can merely adds a notion of modality and presentness to the action or state of seeing.

However, the distinction is one of convenience, not a rigid or even consistent one. What comprises a grammatical function and what lexical content is a semantic criterion, and not one that can be easily defined or tested.

The suicide note rules out murder.

What meaning does rules out add? You could say it merely adds a notion of impossibility and nothing else, just like can't. But we normally call rule (out) a lexical verb.

Brahma is swimming.

In the present continuous, be is commonly considered an auxiliary verb.

Brahma was a man.

This man is Brahma .

As a copula, it is sometimes considered lexical, sometimes non-lexical. What meaning does it add? It mainly establishes identity between Brahma and a/this man. It also expresses (or implies?) that Brahma existed.

Brahma existed as a man.

Existed as mainly expresses existence, but also identity. Exist is commonly treated as a lexical verb. But is it all that different from be? Should exist as be considered a copula? No, because copulae must take a subject complement (among other requirements), which cannot be introduced by as in this way.

Brahma was in love with Sita.

Brahma felt love for Sita.

Here be assigns an attribute/property to the subject in the form of a prepositional phrase, the state of being in love. But feel can do the same thing by means of a noun, although it is limited to feelings, unlike be.

So whether or not you find existence and identity (copula + noun) or existence and attribute/property (copula + adjectival phrase) a mere grammatical function should determine whether or not you call copulae lexical verbs. It is a choice.

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Cerberus
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  • If it is possible, could you add a source that defines to be as non-lexical verb (in a non-auxiliary case)? It might shed more light on the issue as well. Your answer is great though, +1. Will wait for some mare answers, if any. – Bram Vanroy Oct 20 '13 at 12:46
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    @Bram: Three uses of be are often distinguished: existential (there is a man), copula (he was a man), and non-copular auxiliary (he was dancing). Existential be is usually considered lexical by everyone; only copular be is dubious. A random example of an author who considers the copula be to be a function word, not a content word: http://books.google.nl/books?id=oZ03AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA189&lpg=PA189&dq=copula+%22function+word%22&source=bl&ots=oJJcZgxOVq&sig=3FmyQzOzb0WQfQGrxHiXQdGzvzo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=x9JjUs_8IKPX0QWhp4CgDQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=copula%20%22function%20word%22&f=false – Cerberus Oct 20 '13 at 12:58
  • The vast majority of formal semanticists treat copula be as semantically vacuous (or simply as an identity function). The reason is that a predicate such as [a man] is of type <e,t> (a function from entities to truth-values). This means that the predicate can compose directly with a subject of type e without mediation by the copula. The one exception to this is equatives, where both subject and object are of type e, e.g. Hesperus is Phosphorous. In this instance, we have to assign be a contentful denotation. – P Elliott Oct 20 '13 at 14:08
  • I'm adding this comment because i want to clarify what the grounds are for classifying a verb as lexical rather than functional. @Cerberus, you claim that the copula expresses existence and identity in your answer, but it's problematic to make such a claim without an articulated semantic theory. Under an articulated theory, the copula generally turns out to be semantically vacuous. – P Elliott Oct 20 '13 at 14:11
  • @PEl: I don't know what you mean by "articulate", but, as I said in my answer, you need to involve semantics in order to make a distinction between function words and content words, and there is no real clear-cut line. Do you disagree? I don't understand why you think a distinction between function and content word is at all exact enough to prove in fringe cases like this, or why it would be at all meaningful to do so. I'm interested in your reasons. "This means that the predicate can compose directly with a subject of type e without mediation by the copula." Not sure what you mean by this. – Cerberus Oct 20 '13 at 15:17
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    @Cerberus: I wouldn't say they were considered lexical by everyone; the be of There-Insertion is clearly an auxiliary verb that's part of the construction. Indeed, There's is becoming frozen with plural subjects: There's a lotta people out there. The progressive be, the passive be, and the predicate noun/adjective be are all clearly auxiliaries. What meaning is contributed by the progressive, for instance, is not contributed by be, but by the construction of which be is part {form of be + -ing form of next verb}. – jlawler Oct 20 '13 at 15:24
  • @cerberus by "articulate" i suppose i mean delineating which atomic units of an expression are contributing what to its meaning. For example, i would deny that the copular expresses that the subject 'Brahma' exists, on the grounds that using the term 'Brahma' presupposes that 'Brahma' exists in pretty much every construction 'Brahma' occurs in, e.g. 'Brahma likes to drink milk'. From this, it seems sensible to conclude that the proper name itself is the locus of the existence component of meaning. – P Elliott Oct 20 '13 at 15:37
  • @cerberus "This means that the predicate can compose directly with a subject of type e without mediation by the copula." - by this, i mean that in formal semantics, the predicate is treated as a function from individuals to truth values. The subject is an individual, therefore the subject provides the sole argument for the function denoted by a predicate. From the perspective of a semanticist, it doesn't actually matter whether the copula is there or not. Indeed, many languages (like Russian) have a null copula. – P Elliott Oct 20 '13 at 15:39
  • @jlawler: All right, perhaps that was not among least controversial of instances of existential be. What do you think is a good example of existential be? Or do you disagree that existential be is widely acknowledged as a "content" verb"? – Cerberus Oct 20 '13 at 15:42
  • @PElliott: You could say that, and I understand the argument, but then can we still say the lexical meaning of the verb exist is "exist", without contradiction? Conversely, how about existential be, as in in the courtyard were two wells? Should that still have a lexical meaning? But I think I agree the implication of existence is in the sentence Brahma was a man as a whole rather than in be (and rather than in Brahma). To what conclusion does that lead us? I guess to the conclusion that content v. function is not a distinction that is meaningful or useful in fringe cases. – Cerberus Oct 20 '13 at 15:50
  • @Cerberus Au contraire, i think that the implication of existence is in Brahma (the word, not the deity!). I think that if we apply the meaning criterion to be we end up having to conclude that there are lots of different bes, some are content words, and some are function words. Maybe not the most satisfying solution... – P Elliott Oct 20 '13 at 15:54
  • @PElliott: Okay, but I'm not sure whether the finer details of what constitutes a lexical word fall under the purview of formal semantics? Predicate logic and formal semantics rather seem to make certain choices as to what they convert into the building blocks of their formulae, recognising that those choice are to some degree arbitrary, but working with what they have. And that makes sense. At least that is my impression. – Cerberus Oct 20 '13 at 15:55
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    @PElliott: Why do you think the implication of existence in in Brahma and not in the whole sentence? How can you then explain why there is no implication of his existence in does Brahma exist?, or Brahma does not exist...? I rather think his existence has to do with pragmatics at the sentence level. – Cerberus Oct 20 '13 at 15:58
  • @cerberus Yeah...statements of existence are problematic. The reason i want to say the locus of existence is in Brahma is because of the principle of compositionality - the meaning of a construction should be a function of the meanings of its parts. There are good conceptual reasons not to attribute meanings to whole constructions. I'm not sure how to explain the statements of existence though, it's an interesting problem. – P Elliott Oct 20 '13 at 16:03
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    @PElliott: Ah, well, that principle is exactly the basket I wouldn't put all my eggs in in language; that is, it applies to certain phenomena, but not to others, and rarely or never to the final human interpretation of language. Context is almost always important, for example. Trying to analyse an utterance according to the metaphor of building blocks is useful, but not complete; a metaphor like currents in a river, or, e.g., a landscape the result of overlapping impact craters, can lead to other pieces of the puzzle in many cases. – Cerberus Oct 20 '13 at 16:14
  • @Cerberus: my position is that be is totally bleached of semantics and is always and only an auxiliary in English. This is true only of be, btw; it's exceptional. Have does have a lexical (though pretty vague) sense of 'possess'. – jlawler Oct 20 '13 at 16:16
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    @jlawler: Okay, noted. I personally consider the whole distinction between meaning and function useful, but less practical or sustainable in more involved contexts. It's more like a handy rule of thumb, not something fundamental. E.g., I'm not sure tense or number or modality expresses less "meaning" as opposed to "function" to me than the word relation or different or include. I see levels but not black and white. – Cerberus Oct 20 '13 at 16:29
  • @Cerberus: Tense, modality, number, and other grammatical functions are more predictable (logically and grammatically speaking) but less precise in their semantics. Generally they are more subject to idiomatization and heavy (but often extremely idiosyncratic) pragmatic interpretations. I agree that the distinction is useful, but not terribly important, and that it's a matter of gradation -- some words are more bleached than others. But be is at the end point of that scale; it's got no color left at all. – jlawler Oct 20 '13 at 17:37
  • @jlawler Do note British lexical have that has a more distinct and/or prominent meaning than it has in other varieties of English. You can say, for instance, Have you any money? which clearly marks the verb and which is not vague. – Bram Vanroy Oct 21 '13 at 08:56
  • Yes, exactly. The syntactic affordances are different for have; it hasn't bleached everything away -- though 'possess' is an awfully generic meaning, bleachable to a noun case or an existential particle in some languages -- and there is still variable syntax. Be, on the other hand, is totally predictable in syntax; everything's fixed. – jlawler Oct 21 '13 at 16:26