hebrew and "to be"

Perry E. Metzger (perry@piermont.com)
Sun, 11 May 1997 13:24:03 -0400 (EDT)


Since no one else has said it:

It is true that in Hebrew, the verb "to be" is dropped in lots of
circumstances. You say the equivalent of "I Perry" (or should that be
"Me Tarzan"), not "I am Perry". However, this is of no more
significance than the practice in English of dropping the second
person pronoun in imperitives ("Go to the store!") -- the verb is
implied, just as the second person pronoun is implied. The listeners
"hears it" even if it isn't there, as it were.

I don't know of any examples of a language that truly lacks "to be",
though I'm not a linguist.

Perry