Uses of sam, bada, bivam and bidoh in the Modern Bulgarian language

Krasimira Aleksova
Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski

Abstract: In the present study, the uses of sam, bada, bivam and bidoh as copulas or as auxiliary verbs in various evidentials and voices in the modern Bulgarian language are investigated. The competition between both sam and bada and between sam and bivam, byah and bidoh is explored. In addition, the opinion of modern Bulgarians about these three competing couples is studied through an anonymous non-representative survey. Examples are used from all electronic corpora of the Bulgarian language and from the Internet. The truth of three hypotheses is proven: the forms of sam are preferred over the uses of bada and bivam in the various evidential active forms; the forms of bada predominate in the passive evidential forms; the aorist forms bidoh, bide, bide, bidohme, bidohte, bidoha are very infrequent and
today hardly used by modern generations, although they are known.

Keywords: copula, auxiliary verbs, sam, bada, bivam, bidoh, modern Bulgarian language