The various forms of the verb "To Be" - Zero verb and negative, ach, haya

The use of the verb "to be" must be one of the more confusing issues for a beginning student of Bengali. It doesn't pose as much of a problem when reading, but when trying to express yourself you're easily left clueless. Admittedly, I'm myself a bit lost there in some respects. Below is what I have covered this far,

First of all, there's the concept of "zero verb", meaning that you can omit the verb in certain cases, such as ami paNDita ("I am learned"). In other words, when you're just making a plain statement on how a thing is something.

The negative of the zero verb is made with na_i (1st person), na_o (2nd), naYa (3rd) and nana (2nd & 3rd polite). If I am reading this correct (p. 63 in Radice's book, it's a bit of a confusing section), this would mean:

Ami paNDita na_i | (I am not learned.)
tumi paNDita na_o | (You are not learned.)
se paNDita naYa | (He is not learned.)
Apani paNDita nana | (You [polite] are not learned.)
tini paNDita nana | (He [polite] is not learned.)

The verb forms are identical in single and plural cases, hence only the single person forms in the example.

Then, there is the "to be present" verb, used in expressing how a thing is somewhere. This is formed with the verb stem "Ach". You would then say, se zekhane Ache. ("He is there.") This means:

Ami braje Achi | (I am in Vraja.)
tumi braje Acha* | (You are in Vraja.)
se braje Ache | (He is in Vraja.)
apni braje Achen | (You [polite] are in Vraja.)
tini braje Achen | (He [polite] is in Vraja.)

* Sometimes spelled Acho, pronounced as o'ish regardless.

The verb Ach has only a present and a past tense. The past tense goes as follows:

Ami braje chilAma | (I was in Vraja.)
tumi braje chile | (You were in Vraja.)
se braje chila* | (He was in Vraja.)
apni braje chilen | (You [polite] were in Vraja.)
tini braje chilen | (He [polite] was in Vraja.)

* Sometimes spelled chilo, pronounced as o'ish regardless.

The negative form for ach in the present tense is ne_i in all cases, for example: se braje ache ne_i. (He is not in Vraja.) In the past tense, the suffix -nA is added to the verb: se braje chilanA. (He was not in Vraja.)

The verb ach is also used for possession as we use the English "to have". However, the construct is somewhat different - you would say, Amara ba_i Ache. ("My book there is", or "I have a book.") Regardless of the person, the verb - as it is tied with the object in question - is always the familiar third person form, Ache. In the past tense, one would then similarly use chila, Amara ba_i chila ("My book there was", or "I had a book.")

The negative works just like the negative forms of Ach in general, namely Amara ba_i ne_i ("I don't have a book.") and Amara ba_i chilanA ("I didn't have a book.")

Then there is the verb haya that I'm frankly a bit lost with.

Sometimes the verb haya is used in expressing how something is, in the sense of it's having become. Example: sAdhana-bhakti haite haya premera udgama - "From sadhana-bhakti, there is the awakening of prema." (sAdhana-bhakti haite - from sadhana-bhakti; haya - there is; premera - prema's; udgama - awakening)

Can someone explain the use of the verb haya a bit further? How exactly is it different from ach? It seems to me that haya is used when the object and subject of the sentence are tied together with a cause-effect relationship or a similar relationship of dependence, while ach is a more concrete something is somewhere. Is that correct? Also, are there instances when haya can be omitted (and if so, when must it not be omitted)?

You're right, it is a tricky part of the language, and Radice's bit on this isn't the clearest. In all of your example sentences, you really want to use the 3rd singular naYa, since the subject in each instance is a book. It doesn't matter whose it isn't, it is still a 3rd singular subject.

So...

e_i AmAra ba_i naYa | (This isn't my book.)

and so on the same way, with "naYa" in each sentence.

To use na_i in a sentence, try something like

Ami bipra na_i | (I am not a brahmin.)

and so on with "tumi ... na_o", "se ... na_e", etc., depending on who is not a brahmin.

What annoys me most about the different negatives for the "to be" verbs is that Krsnadasa Kaviraja's dialect is again different from these modern calita-bhasa forms. I can actually keep the modern ones straight if I stop to think about them a few moments, but the medieval forms still elude me at times.

Dandavats,
Lancer

The form "haya" is only the 3rd person ordinary present -- the verb is conjugated in other persons and tenses, just so everyone knows. The dictionary look-up form is "ha_o_YA" if I've figured out your transcription system (pronounced more like "hawA").

I'm not a native speaker of Bengali, so any subtleties I mention should be taken with a grain of salt before being further verified, but the way I distinguish "Ach-" and "ha-" is that the latter has more of a "to become" flavor to it, as you pointed out above. And don't forget "thAk-", which is another Bengali verb that can be translated by an English form of "to be". I was just reading Dimock's primer this morning where he nicely differentiated these -- I'll key it in this evening if someone else doesn't beat me to it.

Dandavats,
Lancer

Rather I should change the example sentences to demonstrate the point they were meant to make... Ami paNDita na_i.

Thank you for the notes. I should have read over my posts one more time before posting. The transliteration system in Radice's book annoys me greatly, in cases where Bengali script isn't supplied it is hard to figure out what exactly the transliterated words really are.

How do you conjugate it? as ha_oYA, it's a regular vowel stem verb conjugation then - hA_i, hA_o, hAYa, hana?



I use the underscore _ before a detached (?) vowel, otherwise it's just regular H-K with Y and P as extensions for .y and .D. You wouldn't then need the underscore after the o. Thanks for the root form, I was wondering where it was in the dictionary...

Ami ha_i
tu_i hasa
tumi ha_o
se haya
Apani hana
tini hana

Ugh, the problem with Bengali (well, it's our problem, not the language's problem) is that trying to read and pronounce these forms correctly, without already knowing how they are pronounced, can be a challenge. So with this form "Ami ha_i", because of vowel alternation, "ha_i" is pronounced like "ho_i" (rhyming with the Bengali word for book).

Dandavats,
Lancer

Here is Dimock on the uses of the various verbs translated as "to be" in English:





Dimock, of course, uses a phonetic transcription for all of his examples, and I have converted those to a raw spelling transcription. Apologies if I screwed it up.

Dandavats,
Lancer