a prepositional phrase or the adverb 'here' or 'there'. For example, in the sentence, (, "We are here"), the copula () is omitted. Russian In Russian the copula () is normally omitted in the present tense, but not in the past and "future tenses": Present (omitted): (, "She at home"), literally "She is now at home, in the house" Past (used): (, "She was at home") The third person plural (, "are") is still used in some standard phrases, but since it is a homonym of the noun "essence", most native speakers do not notice it to be a verb: (, "they are one and the same"). The verb () is the infinitive of "to be". The third person singular, () means "is" (and it is a homophone of the infinitive "to eat"). As a copula, it can be inflected into the past (, ), "future" (, ), and conditional (, ) forms. A present tense (, ) exists; however, it is almost never used as a copula, but rather omitted altogether or replaced by the verb (, "to be in essence"). Thus one can say: (, "she was a beautiful woman")—predicate noun in instrumental case. (, "she is a beautiful woman")—predicate noun in the nominative case. (, "she is a beautiful woman")—predicate noun also in instrumental. But not usually: (, "she is a beautiful woman"), which would be very formal and would suggest something more than a copula, something more existential than the normal English use of "is". As a result, this construction is quite rare. But in some cases the verb in the present tense (form ) is employed: (Be who you are). The present tense of the copula in Russian was in common use well into the 19th century (as attested in the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky) but is now used only for archaic effect (analogous to "thou art" in English). Turkic languages There is a contrast between the regular verb "to be" () and the copulative/auxiliary verb "to be" () in Turkish. The auxiliary verb shows its existence only through suffixes to predicates that can be nouns, adjectives or arguably conjugated verb stems, arguably being the only irregular verb in Turkish. In the third person, zero copula is the rule, as in Hungarian or Russian. For example: {| border="0" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1" | align=left | || align=right | || align=left | |- | | "[The] sea [is]