Re: to have & have not

Bill Bonde ('Soli Deo Gloria'):

> Harlan Messinger wrote:

>> Of course it's nonsense, since the *concept* of possession exists, along
>> with some linguistic convention for expressing it, in all languages,
>> whether or not via an active verb.

For some languages, the question is not whether the word for "have" (or
"be") *exists* but whether it is *used*. In Russian, you would say
"u menja k***" (with me book), avoiding both "have" (as in "I *have* a
book") and "be" (as in "with me *is* a book"). But both verbs exist, they
are just not normally used. The same, by the way, holds for English, where
"have" is not normally used but rather replaced by "have got".

> What languages lack a verb "to be"?

Quite some, at least in present or unspecified tense. All of these
languages which I know (a tiny sample, though) have a verb for "be" which
is resurrected in other tenses and aspects:

Russian:
Ivan - uchitelj. Ivan [is] a teacher.
Ivan *budet* uchitelem. Ivan will be (or: is becoming) a teacher.
Ivan *byl* uchitelem. Ivan was a teacher.
(Is the instrumental case correct? Is it mandatory?)

Modern Hebrew:
Moshe more. Moshe [is] a teacher.
Moshe *yihye* more. Moshe will be a teacher.
Moshe *haya* more. Moshe was a teacher.

Helmut Richter
.