The copula be is such an integral part of any language that we hardly think about it. We couldn't be without, well, be. What are its origins in English, Spanish and Japanese? Fasten your seat belt as we prepare for take off...
If we examine the Modern English copula, we notice that it has eight forms in total:
1. Be (used for the infinitive, subjunctive, imperative)
2. Am (used for the present first person singular)
3. Are (used for the present second person singular and all plural forms)
4. Is (used for the present third person singular)
5. Was (used for the past first and third person singulars)
6. Were (past second person singular and all past plurals and the past subjunctive)
7. Being (progressive, present participle and gerund)
8. Been (perfect participle)
Compared to other verbs in English, be seems like a hot mess. This is because it's been through one hell of a journey. The modern forms derive from a combination of what's called the B-ROOT (for forms like be, being, been) and the S-ROOT (forms like am, are, is) and within the S-ROOT, the W-BASE, which gave life to was/were forms. You've probably noticed that the forms directly below the S-ROOT node appear to have no "s" in them other than was or is, but don't worry: you're not crazy. These forms changed in a way that I will explain in a minute. First, let's examine the B-ROOT below.
The B-ROOT is a root conjectured to have been *bheue- in the mother tongue to languages like English and Spanish, Proto-Indo-European or PIE for short. *Bheue- meant "be, exist, grow, come into being" and gave life to the Proto-Germanic (mother tongue of English and other Germanic languages like German or Dutch) *biju- "I am" or "I will be". Old English inherited beon, beom and bion (be, exist, come to be, become, happen). In Old English, the forms of 'be' derived from this B-ROOT had no past tense. Their sole function was as the future tense to the verbs am and was (Similarly, the imperfect Russian verb быть, 'be', when conjugated with the present endings actually means 'I will be' and not 'I am', etc.) and had a rather rocky history in taking root in English. Late in the 13th century, the B-ROOT served as the infinitive, imperfect and participle forms of am/was. By Middle English, its plurals we beth, ye ben, they be had taken hold and transitioned into the singular forms I be, thou beest, he beth before being taken over by the S-ROOT are form in the 1500s.
What about this S-ROOT business? For this, we turn to am, from the Old English eom 'to be, remain'. This sprang from the PIE *esmi-, itself from the PIE root *es-; thus, the S ('es') of S-ROOT. Am expressed the present tense of be, and initially appeared in two plural forms: sind/sindon (cf. German third person plural sind) and earon/aron (cf. are). In the early 13th century, the s- eroded and be replaced its function. Aron (aren, arn, are, probably derived from the Proto-Germanic *ar-, a variant of the PIE root *es-) lived on and as the be-am paradigm emerged, it took the role of some functions previously covered by be, becoming the standard form by the early 1500s. Art became archaic in the 1800s.
With the present and the future tenses covered, was/were took on the past tense meanings. Before the 13th century, this *wes- root tended to express "existence" while beon likely meant "come to be". Let's look at the development of was and were.
Was finds its roots in the Old English wesan "to remain" from the Proto-Germanic *wesanan, itself from the PIE root *wes-, 'remain, abide, dwell'. Within the verb, a sound change called Verner's Law (named after Danish linguist Karl Verner) took place, shifting 's' to 'z' and then 'z' to 'r' to create the forms waeron, the past plural indicative of wesan and waere, the second person singular past indicative. In the 1500s, the form wast for the second person singular was formed on the analogy of be/beest and displaced were, which came to be represented as wert in literature from the 17th and 18th centuries before were reclaimed its post.
With all of this information in mind, let's take a look at the Old English paradigm for the verb be:
Present: ic eom/beo, thu eart/bist, he is/bith, we sind(on)/beoth, ge sind(on)/beoth, hie sind(on)/beoth
Preterite: ic waes, thu waere, heo waes, we waeron, ge waeron, hie waeron
Preterite Subjunctive: ic waere, thu waere, heo waere, we waeren, ge waeren, hie waeren
The S-ROOT (*es-) didn't stop with English. It gave life to forms in other languages, such as the Latin esse. In Latin, this verb expressed be, but it also had a rocky transition into life in the daughter languages. In Spanish, students are often put off by the existence of two verbs for be, ser and estar. The traditional, general explanation is that ser expresses permanent states while estar expresses impermament states. These copulas derive from a combination of three verbs. Estar springs from the Vulgar Latin *estare, likely an intermediate form of the Latin stare 'to stand'. Ser is divided among two verbs, sedere ('to sit') and the original sum-esse paradigm, likely following one of two paths:
1. ESSE -> èssere (as in Italian) -> ésser (as in Catalan) -> ser
2. SEDERE -> *seder -> seer -> ser
As I mentioned previously, the tendency in the phonetic evolution of Latin to Spanish was to drop voiced medial consonants (b, d, g) in addition to the final -e characteristic of Latin verbs. The entire conjugation paradigm for ser appears to be split among these two verbs. For example, the present indicative appears to derive from esse while the present subjunctive appears to derive from sedere; thus:
Present Indicative
(Latin > Spanish)
Sum > Soy
Es > Eres
Est > Es
Sumus > Somos
Estis > Sois
Sunt > Son
Present Subjunctive
(Latin > Spanish)
Sedeam > Sea
Sedeas > Seas
Sedeat > Sea
Sedeamus > Seamos
Sedeatis > Seais
Sedeant > Sean
The present indicative first person singular form had rival forms sujo and sojo in Spain (thus the form soy). It also adopted both eres from Latin's second person future eris and sois from an eroded form of estis, *sutis. The subjunctive seems to be a confusion of sedeam forms with the Vulgar Latin *sedja in the Iberian Peninsula, and gave way to seya in Old Spanish and this further reduced to the Modern Spanish sea.
Finally, we have the Japanese copula です desu, which came into use during the Edo period (1603-1868). The development of this verb is rather clear compared to many other Japanese verbs. Initially the Japanese verb おはします／おわします ohashimasu/owashimasu was used, but with the advent of kanji, the characters 御座 were applied with the reading goza. 御座 goza is defined by the Yahoo!辞書 as:
ごーざ【御座】
１ 座を敬っていう語。貴人の席。おまし。ぎょざ。
２ 貴人がおいでになること。
Essentially, it referred to the seat of a noble person, which transferred it to the idea of the noble person's coming, going or being. From there it was only a matter of time and increased usage for it to gain its current form, to which あり ari was added to give 御座あり gozaari. The forms collapsed into a single unit, 御座り gozari, resembling the modern dictionary form ござる gozaru of ございます gozaimasu. This was prefixed with で de- to give で御座り degozari, thus sending it on its evolutionary journey: でござります degozarimasu -> でござんす degozansu -> であんす deansu -> でえす deesu -> です／だ desu/da.
The English 'be' and the Latin 'be' appear to have derived from roots with the meaning of "become" or "come to be" or "exist", while the Spanish and Japanese roots refer to a state of sitting (sedere -> ser, degozari -> desu) or standing (stare -> estar). Could this be a trend among the languages of the world? I'd be curious to hear how other verbs developed.
On a side note, the B-ROOT mentioned earlier gave life to 'be' verbs in other Indo-European languages as well. For example, the German bin, bist (< Old High German bim, bist), Old Church Slavonic byti ('be'), Greek phu- ('become'), Old Irish bi'u ('I am'), Lithuanian bu'ti ('be'), Latin perfective tenses of esse: fui ('I was'), etc. It also gave the Sanskrit bhavah ('becoming') and bhavati ('becomes, happens'), and bhumih ('earth, world').
And that concludes our tour, ladies and gentlemen. If you have any further comments, questions, or details you would like to add, please feel free to add a comment below. We thank you for traveling with us today and hope to see you again soon!
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