Does the liguistic copula have more than a gestural meaning?

The point is, as another member of your former group pointed out, you appear to be here merely to attempt to derail threads.

I've never heard anyone say, "The weather is wet." It just doesn't sound logical.
I've heard people say, "The dog is brown."
I'm not well versed in the fancy words you are using in this thread, but you just seem to be trying to outdo each other in the usage of fancy words.
And that will get you no further forward in the quest to find an answer to the question.

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I don't believe that any fluent English speaker would ever say, "The weather is wet" or "The weather is getting wet". It is just not English.

I'm beginning to get the picture that you just put up rubbish like this as a hobby!
I hope I'm wrong .

What I mean by rubbish is that the sentence "The dog is brown" only tends to occur in ESL primers for foreigners*, or stretching it...to a notice about a missing dog, whereas "the weather is wet" is common usage for native speakers. By common usage, I mean it is used on a daily basis by parents explaining to their children why certain family activities will or won't take place.

The point is, as another member of your former group pointed out, you appear to be here merely to attempt to derail threads.

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*As in French Book1 ..... Le chien est brun . La porte est brune....regarding the agreement of adjectives with noun gender in comparison with English

To be perfectly honest, as a native speaker, I'm having a hard time parsing "the dog is brown". What complete nonsense. The dog is a dog, now that makes sense -- clearly the dog is a dog, as a dog couldn't not be a dog if it were a dog. It is, after all, a dog. But how can an object be a color? A color is an adjective, not a noun, and your sentence is just silly, and clearly will mislead all those new to the English language -- the most consistent language with elegant rules and precisely defined words that rarely see alternate or incorrect use.

Huxley, the following is not meant as a particular criticism of your post:

There is a breathtaking ignorance of the range of meanings for the words "grammar" and "language" being shown by respondents to this relatively technical thread.

Taking "transformational grammar" for example, the sentence
"The dog is brown" could be interpreted as one "surface" realization of the deep structure "the dog is a brown object". Another surface realization of that deep structure might be the phrase "the brown dog".

But that is merely one angle on the above arguments. We could also explore the field of comparative linguists where the English verb to be maps to different verbs in Spanish (aproximately)ser to be in a particular state, and estar to be actively doing something. It follows that the two OP sentences about "weather" could be associated with these different verbs.

The third point I would make, and for me the most significant one is that as soon as we engage in contrastive analysis we are taking utterances out of their original context. In other words "grammatical analysis" is an artificial academic pursuit rather than a "natural one". As Chomsky pointed out. children pick up " the grammar of their native language" without active intstruction, and even the latter tends to be about exceptions to rules.
There is even an argument (by Wexler) that it is impossible to adequately teach a second language to a foreigner without "cultural immersion"...but then of course the argument moves to one about "communicative adequacy",

You are confusing two senses of "is". The "is" of predication, and the "is" of identity. The "is" in the sentence, "the dog is brown" is the "is" of predication. The predicate "brown" is predicated of the subject, "dog". In class logic, this would be analyzed as: the class of dogs is included within the class of brown things. On the other hand, consider the sentence, "the dog is my pet". Here the "is" is the "is" of identity (and not of predication as in the former example). "The dog is my pet" states that the dog is identical with my pet. That the dog and my pet are one and the same thing. So that, "the dog" and "my pet" denote the very same object.

It is important to be aware of, and to distinguish between these two different senses of "is": the predicative sense, and the identity sense. Otherwise you will make the mistake of thinking that when I say, for instance, that butter is yellow, I will be saying that butter is the same thing as yellow (which is nonsense) instead of what I am actually saying which is that butter is one of the things that are yellow.

There is yet a third sense of "is", the "is" of existence (which is not much used). An example of this third sense of "is" would be, "Barack Obama is". Which is to say, Barack Obama exists.

These three sense of "is": the "is" of predication; the "is" of identity; and the "is" of existence, should be strictly distinguished and not confused.

And yet all of these (is's) are categorized as states of being which is what a copula infers, which is what the thread is about.

kennethamy wrote:

You are confusing two senses of "is". The "is" of predication, and the "is" of identity. The "is" in the sentence, "the dog is brown" is the "is" of predication. The predicate "brown" is predicated of the subject, "dog". In class logic, this would be analyzed as: the class of dogs is included within the class of brown things. On the other hand, consider the sentence, "the dog is my pet". Here the "is" is the "is" of identity (and not of predication as in the former example). "The dog is my pet" states that the dog is identical with my pet. That the dog and my pet are one and the same thing. So that, "the dog" and "my pet" denote the very same object.

It is important to be aware of, and to distinguish between these two different senses of "is": the predicative sense, and the identity sense. Otherwise you will make the mistake of thinking that when I say, for instance, that butter is yellow, I will be saying that butter is the same thing as yellow (which is nonsense) instead of what I am actually saying which is that butter is one of the things that are yellow.

There is yet a third sense of "is", the "is" of existence (which is not much used). An example of this third sense of "is" would be, "Barack Obama is". Which is to say, Barack Obama exists.

These three sense of "is": the "is" of predication; the "is" of identity; and the "is" of existence, should be strictly distinguished and not confused.

And yet all of these (is's) are categorized as states of being which is what a copula infers, which is what the thread is about.

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And yet all of these (is's) are categorized as states of being which is what a copula infers, which is what the thread is about.

Precisely ! And "states of being" are never independent of "states of the observer"

That is false. There need be no observer for the Moon to exist. We know that because we know that the Moon existed for many millions of years before any observer existed. If you do not believe that is true, then you can look it up.

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That is false. There need be no observer for the Moon to exist. We know that because we know that the Moon existed for many millions of years before any observer existed. If you do not believe that is true, then you can look it up.

Right ! I'm off to look it up in the "Readers Digest Encyclopedia for the Philosophically Impaired".

fresco wrote:

Quote:

And yet all of these (is's) are categorized as states of being which is what a copula infers, which is what the thread is about.

Precisely ! And "states of being" are never independent of "states of the observer"

That is false. There need be no observer for the Moon to exist. We know that because we know that the Moon existed for many millions of years before any observer existed. If you do not believe that is true, then you can look it up.