Present tence copulative verbs

Jonathan Robie jonathan at texcel.no
Wed Sep 2 12:08:27 EDT 1998


dan-åke mattsson wrote:

>I would appreciate
>it if some list-members would  express their opinion as to whether or not
>the following sentences are ungrammatical or are border cases (the
>judgement should be based on one`s intuition and/or similar examples from
>English prose texts without using special cases such as historical
>present).

May I suggest that B-Greek is about Greek, and not about English? If we
start going down the path of which constructions are grammatical in
English, we will then have to make judgements about whether the verb "to
be" operates the same way, for both English and Greek, and we will get into
a deep swamp that we will never get out of.

The Greek is more relevant: if this construction is a commonly used form in
the Greek of the day, as opposed to a form used to describe supernatural
states related to God, it would be helpful to have some examples of that.
Can you give some examples of this construction used in Greek for everyday
human events?
 
Jonathan



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