Table Of ContentA Brief History of the Verb To Be
A Brief History of the Verb To Be
Andrea Moro
Translated by Bonnie McClellan-Broussard
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
The translation of this book has been funded by SEPS—Segretariato
Europeo per le Pubblicazioni Scientifiche.
Via Val d’Aposa 7—40123 Bologna
[email protected]
www.seps.it
© 2017 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Published by arrangement with The Italian Literary Agency.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
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ing, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing
from the publisher.
This book was set in Times LT Std by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Moro, Andrea, author. | McClellan-Broussard, Bonnie, translator.
Title: A brief history of the verb to be / Andrea Moro ; translated by
Bonnie McClellan-Broussard.
Description: Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, [2017] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017014934 | ISBN 9780262037129 (hardcover :
acid-free paper)
Subjects: LCSH: English language--Verb phrase. | English language--
Grammar, Historical. | Phraseology.
Classification: LCC PE1319 .M6713 2017 | DDC 415/.6--dc23 LC
record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017014934
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Encore.
This book is dedicated to all the beautiful things that come to an end
because they prove to me that I am looking for one that does not.
Such a vain presumption of understanding everything can have no other
origin than never having understood anything because, when others have
experienced but once the perfect understanding of a single thing and truly
tasted what knowledge is, they would know that, of the infinity of other
conclusions, they understand nothing.
—Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, first
day
… extensive, which is to say: regarding the multitude of understandable
things, which is infinite, human understanding is as nothing, for while one
may well understand a thousand propositions, a thousand in the face of
infinity is like zero; but given intensive understanding, where this term
means intensively, which is perfectly, of some propositions, I say that
human intellect understands some things perfectly, and has such absolute
certainty as does nature itself.
—Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems,
second day
In my opinion the distinctive faculty of an active or intelligent being is the
ability to give a meaning to this word: is.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile
Contents
Only One Passion ix
Acknowledgments xi
Prologue xiii
1 To Be—and Not “Being”—or, The Names of the Verb 1
1.1 The Name of Tense 7
1.2 The Name of Affirmation 29
1.3 The Name of Identity 44
2 Anatomy of a Sentence 69
2.1 The Calm before the Storm 81
2.2 Molecules of Words 85
2.3 The Anomaly of the Copula: The Asymmetry That Isn’t
There 121
3 The Strange Case of Verbs without Subjects 127
3.1 The Quasi-Copula 129
3.2 Is and There Is 142
3.3 “Non-Euclidean” Grammars: Concerning the Rise and Fall of
the Subject Postulate 152
3.4 The Unified Theory of Copular Sentences 161
3.5 There Is, or “And Yet It Moves” 171
viii Contents
4 Epilogues between Language and Necessity 193
4.1 The Form of Grammar: Between Linearity and
Hierarchy 195
4.2 Language in the Brain 205
4.3 Losing and Acquiring the Copula 220
Afterword 233
Notes 235
Bibliography 263
Index 281
Only One Passion
There is a God-shaped void in the heart of every person and it can never
be filled by anything.
—Blaise Pascal, apocryphal quote
One can become passionate about anything: there are those who
forever pursue never-before-heard music, those who hunt for an
ideal form, those who design a perfect recipe, others who plunge
into a parallel universe in the attempt to understand a mathematical
formula. I know people who do whatever they do, looking through
the lens of a passion, like a polarized filter. Sometimes, pursuing
a passion, one can follow roads that would otherwise never have
been traveled, explore places inhabited by reason and imagination;
one can glimpse the form of questions that would otherwise never
have been posed.
I am passionate about a verb: the verb to be. Certainly it’s only
one passion, but it’s passion that reawakens true demands, the
demands of the truth. What you’re about to read is the history, as
I tell it, of the analysis of the verb to be and of the discovery of a
formula that responds to some crucial questions about this verb.
Like all histories, this one is partial, subjective, and limited, but
perhaps only by being partial, subjective, and limited can a history
be comprehensible. Why read this history? Because I’m convinced
