Copulas in Sgaw Karen

Many languages have copula systems involving more than one copula. In such languages, the functional scopes of the participating copulas vary. This kind of typological variation has not yet been studied in great detail. In Sgaw Karen, three copulas exist, and the functional differences among these can be defined at the semantic as well as at the pragmatic level. For instance, the contrast between the copulas mewæþ and kʔ seems to be coextensive with the notional difference between nouns and adjectives as postulated by theorists such as Croft, Langacker, and Wierzbicka.