Aspectual verbs of being include: weze ‘to be’, blieuwe ‘to stay’. They are traditionally referred to as copulas. These also includes verbs of body position such as sitte ‘to sit’, läze ‘to lie’, stounde ‘to stand’ and hongje ‘to hang’. They may combine with all sorts of PPs, that is, with prepositional phrases (PreP), postpositional phrases (PostP), and with bare adpositions (BadP). Consider the following examples illustrating each of these subcategories:

The BadP is quite idiomatic, as is relatively often the case with bare adpositions. In West Frisian, the verb weze ‘to be’ can be combined with a to-infintive denoting an activity, This so-called absentive construction entails that the subject of the infinitive is absent. No such construction seems to exist in Saterland Frisian, though. An absentive interpretation is characteristically expressed by means of the bare adposition wäch ‘away’, a borrowing from Low German. The native adposition wai ‘(away) to’ is more frequently used with a prepositional phrase. It is difficult to express the semantic and syntactic differences between these two adpositions. Their distribution seems to be the outcome of a subtle form of competition. When used as bare adpositions, there are minimal pairs, like the following:

Wächbale mislead by words	Waibale talk with enthusiasm
Wächkonne be fit to be thrashed	Waikonne be able to get by
Wächreke give away	Waireke present, sacrifice
Wächgunge go away	Waigunge go somewhere

A systematic list should be drawn up and studied with respect to actual language use. The examples suggest as a first hypothesis that wäch ‘away’ is associated with diminishment of presence, locational and otherwise, whereas wai is associated with change of presence. Hence wai ‘way’ is frequently found with a PreP specifying the new location, which is new information. In contrast, wäg ‘away’ is only sometimes found with a PP specifiying the old location, since the old location usually does not need to be specified. Two examples illustrating this difference are given below:

The example with wäch ‘away’ involves a permanent going away from, with a negative connocation, whereas wai ‘away’ just involves a temporary change (here: of location).

Aspectual verbs of becoming or change such as wäide ‘become’ are not frequently used with PPs, but rather with APs. The characteristic verb of change of location is gunge ‘go’, which characteristically combines with PPs. This verb can be used to express change with PPs which receive a more abstract interpretation than just location. The following example illustrates the use of gunge ‘go’ as a verb of change:

Here the meaning of gunge ‘go’ clearly involves a non-locational change, which is other wise characteristic of wäide ‘become’. Gunge characteristically combines with stative verbs to express a change of location:

Other prototypical verbs of motion are similarly used, such as kume ‘come’.

Modal verbs include moute ‘must’, konne ‘can’, hougje ‘need’, dure ‘dürfen’, wolle ‘want’, and somewhat marginally, muge ‘may’. The stem of the past tense of muge ‘may’ is the same as the onset and nucleus of the secondary stem of the verb moute ‘must’. This is then another instance of suppletion. Modals can be used as intransitive copulas. Some examples are given below:

The examples are either plainly locative, such as the first and the third examples, or they are more idiomatic, such as the second and the fourth example.

Motional verbs obviously result in a change of location, such as Rääd fiere ‘to cycle’. An example is given below:

Activity verbs can be used as verbs of motion which result in a change of location, as in the following example:

These examples also illustrate that motional verbs which are resultative form their perfect tense with the verb to be, and not with the verb to have.

Evidential verbs, or evaluative verbs, are verbs like läite ‘look like, appear’ are evaluative verbs. They may also be referred to as evidential verbs. The verb läite ‘look like’ selects a PP in case it expresses resemblance:

Otherwise evidential verbs combine with APs rather than PPs, as in the following example:

The following evidential verb, based on a verb of visual perception, combines a bare PP with an AP as its basic idiomatic structure:

This evidential idiom is especially used for illnesses. Consider also the following example, with a different verb of perception, which can be more generally used:

Here the AP is the target of a comparative clause introduced by as ‘than, as’. Below is given a highly idiomatic example of an intransitive evidential:

A similar construction also exists in West Frisian featuring the verb skine ‘shine’. The construction is limited to prepositional complements denoting a colour.

Evidentiality can also be expressed by means of a phrase headed by the word as ‘as’. This word indicates that the predication mediated by the copula is interpreted as an evidential. An example is given below:

In this example, the PP is a complement of the copula rather than an adverbial.