The Hebrew Present-Tense Copula as a Mixed Category

Hebrew has several ways to express the present tense equivalent of the copular verb haya 'to be'. None of these forms is verbal in nature; Aside from the zero realization, they are nominal. It is argued that the functional verbal nature and categorial nominal nature of these forms combine to make the present-tense copular forms mixed-category constructions, and that this accounts for the peculiar syntactic properties displayed by present tense copulas.