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1,300 pages dedicated to a special word: Dr Luca Ciucci is among the editors of a work that examines how the world's languages handle "to be".
The verb "to be" in English is a special word. It looks like a verb, but when it is used in a clause, its properties differ from those of a typical verb. Indeed, it can be a copula, as in "that is the question", or an auxiliary ("I am writing"). But why is "to be" different? And how is it expressed in the world’s languages?
Dr Luca Ciucci from the University of Passau is among the linguists who have published a multivolume work that might serve as a useful reference on non-verbal predication for years to come. “As linguists, we talk about ‘non-verbal predication’ because ‘to be’ is, from a technical perspective, not a proper verb but rather a verb-like element,” explains Dr Ciucci. The book is the result of five years of research and a collaboration of 40 scholars from around the world.
A rare phenomenon in Zamucoan languages
Dr Ciucci focused on languages from traditionally little-described families, such as the small Zamucoan family. His interest was sparked in 2009 while studying Chamacoco, an Indigenous language with about 2,500 speakers in northern Paraguay. He noticed an intriguing pattern: nouns appeared in shorter forms when used in constructions that would require "to be" in English. For example, owa tɨmchar ("you are a woman") lacks a copula, while the full noun form appears in verbal clauses, such as tɨmcharrza uushɨ ("the woman runs"). Later, a comparative study he co-authored showed that while copula omission is common cross-linguistically (as in Hungarian János tanár, literally "János teacher"), the Zamucoan system—where shorter nouns fulfill the copula’s role—is exceptionally rare.
Systematically tracking nonverbal predication
This prompted a research project aimed at systematically investigating nonverbal predication. In 2020, Dr Ciucci – who, at the time, was a researcher at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia – teamed up with Pier Marco Bertinetto from Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, and Denis Creissels from Université Lumière Lyon 2 in France. Their work culminated in this landmark publication “Non-verbal predication in the world’s languages: A typological survey”. It has appeared in the series Comparative Handbooks of Linguistics, by De Gruyter Mouton. It consists of two volumes with a total of about 1,300 pages. It provides detailed descriptions from selected languages and families across Eurasia, the Americas, Africa, and Oceania.
About the person
Dr Ciucci has been a researcher at the chair of Multilingual Computational Linguistics led by Professor Johann-Mattis List at the University of Passau since 2024. He holds a PhD cum laude in in Modern Languages and Linguistics from Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa), where he analysed how words change form to express grammatical meanings in the Zamucoan languages of Bolivia and Paraguay. He combines the documentation of endangered languages with the study of their historical sources to better understand the related cultural and linguistic changes. At the University of Passau, he is part of the ERC research group “ProduSemy” that uses algorithms in order investigate the evolution of word families, a topic that linguists know little about.
Dr Luca Ciucci
Chair of Multilingual Computational Linguistics
University of Passau
Mail: luca.ciucci@uni-passau.de
https://www.degruyterbrill.com/serial/chl-9-b/html
https://www.digital.uni-passau.de/en/beitraege/2025/non-verbal-predication Dr Luca Ciucci explains his research fascination for the word “to be”
The verb “to be”, which raises major existential questions in Shakespeare's Hamlet, is also the subj ...
Source: University of Passau
Copyright: University of Passau
Dr Luca Ciucci presenting the multivolume work about non-verbal predication.
Source: University of Passau
Copyright: University of Passau
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The verb “to be”, which raises major existential questions in Shakespeare's Hamlet, is also the subj ...
Source: University of Passau
Copyright: University of Passau
Dr Luca Ciucci presenting the multivolume work about non-verbal predication.
Source: University of Passau
Copyright: University of Passau
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