On Oct 8, 2007, at 5:44 PM, Chad Perrin wrote:

> I'm curious -- exactly what class of syntactic element is `=` in Ruby,
> where "class of syntactic element" is roughly analogous to "part of
> speech".  If objects are nouns and methods are verbs, that means  
> `=` is
> neither a noun nor a verb.  Is it a participle?  Is it  
> punctuation?  If
> it's a participle, I'd like to know what class of syntactic element  
> that
> is in Ruby.  If it's punctuation, I'd like some explanation for how  
> that
> works conceptually -- because I think of punctuation in Ruby as being
> stuff like the parentheses around a method argument.
>
> Anyone?  Bueller?

I think it might be consider a copula. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/ 
wiki/Copula>.

Regards, Morton