The Hebrew Present-Tense Copula as a Mixed Category

Yehuda N. Falk

Abstract

Hebrew has several ways to express the present tense equivalent of the copular verb haya 'to be'. None of these forms is verbal in nature; Aside from the zero realization, they are nominal. It is argued that the functional verbal nature and categorial nominal nature of these forms combine to make the present-tense copular forms mixed-category constructions, and that this accounts for the peculiar syntactic properties displayed by present tense copulas.