Page 96 - Bhojpuri Verb Morphology

Copula acts as helping verb, as we saw in above examples. More examples are given

in Aspect section no 4.2 of Chapter 4. The role of copula as helping verb is found in
perfective aspect and in imperfective aspect. Durative aspect of imperfective aspect
govern copula as helping verb.

There are different copulas in Bhojpuri. ,  and ,  and  are the main
copulas. These auxiliaries occur almost after all aspect markers.  and  can

stand their own as main verb, while  appears as compound verb. The alternate

forms of copula , which are based on tenses, always followed by agreement

suffixes.

5.7 Summary

In this chapter we discussed about copula of Bhojpuri language. There are different

forms of copula in Bhojpuri which is inflected for tense, aspect, gender and
honorificity. Copula can perform two main functions: they can act as main verb or as
'helping' verb. There are two main copulas  and  in Bhojpuri.  can be

considered as an existential copula, whereas  is considered as the identificational

copula. The copula  has its alternate forms: ,  and //, which are

used in present, past and future tense respectively. The auxiliary  can be used both

as stative and non-stative verb. There is a negative copula  in Bhojpuri.

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