So I can't for the fucking life of me figure out what form this is supposed to be I be responsible and mow my lawn, and I miss everyone
I produced it, it's right for me, the somewhat comparable I was responsible and mowed my lawn, and I miss everyone does NOT mean the same thing. But no clue what form it is (and if someone says 'it's the infinitive durr' I WILL STALK YOU DEAD).
Are you asking about more grammatical or pragmatically suitable alternatives to "be" as the verb there? I would probably say "I am responsible and mow my lawn" or something along those lines.
"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."
Jabechasqvi wrote:Are you asking about more grammatical or pragmatically suitable alternatives to "be" as the verb there? I would probably say "I am responsible and mow my lawn" or something along those lines.
Drydic Guy wrote:I be responsible and mow my lawn, and I miss everyone
Well the subjunctive is normally encountered in the form "It's important that I be elected" and "If I were king"; here it doesn't look like a subordinate clause, so maybe it's not really the same thing.
The subjunctive does not need to be in a subordinate clause. It just happens that in more modern usage, subordinate clauses happen to be really its last holdouts. In more archaic usage, it was not unusual to find the subjunctive in a main clause, as it is found here.
It's common in AAVE (sub)dialects to use the verb "to be" like that. I be, you be. Yes, main clauses. Maybe you've been influenced by that, Drydic guy?
Also, why did you compare it with was? Does "I be" have past tense for you here?
This might be obvious to other people but I'm trying to figure out what you meant with it. At first it seemed totally wrong as far as anything I'd ever say, but then I realized I can imagine at least one context in which I'd say that verbatim. In the second sentence, do you mean "miss" as in "not see" rather than "long for"? (Only asking because it made no sense to me with the latter meaning.) If so, while I don't know what this is grammatically speaking, it's something I do. It's almost like a response to an imperative. If someone said to me "Be responsible and do the right thing", I can imagine saying "I be responsible and do the right thing, but I still get screwed over", stress on the "be". I guess I would use that construction when the first half of the sentence (e.g. the imperative bit) led to the second half, which is generally an undesirable result.
Drydic Guy wrote:(though the usage joined under is still a little mysterious).
calque of sub- junct
Sinjana wrote:It's common in AAVE (sub)dialects to use the verb "to be" like that. I be, you be. Yes, main clauses. Maybe you've been influenced by that, Drydic guy?
That's habitual, the other obvious candidate here.
Maybe it's just a short form of "I go and be" ? Edit: hi Nort
Travis B. wrote:The subjunctive does not need to be in a subordinate clause. It just happens that in more modern usage, subordinate clauses happen to be really its last holdouts. In more archaic usage, it was not unusual to find the subjunctive in a main clause, as it is found here.
Perhaps, but I often wonder if "I am"/"I be" distinction is beginning to develop the sort of "ser/estar" dichotomy of Spanish. Consider "I be responsible" vs "I am/was [always] responsible".
I think it's kind of active instead of stative, or something, since I think it's sort of fine for me but "I go and be responsible" would mean something slightly different. Kinda difficult to explain it, though. I'm sure I've asked about this in the context of people who be something in a play. ("Every night, I be Caesar for forty minutes, and then he, uh ... bes ... Caesar for the next forty minutes")
...Frankly, I don't think I've ever heard this usage of "I be" here in Vancouver — that's why it strikes me as AAVE-like. Still, surprising you're perfectly familiar with it even though you're from Scotland.
It's perfectly normal for me. I be responsible, I be'd responsible, he be's responsible... It's not a subjunctive at all, it's something like habitual.
travis wrote:The subjunctive does not need to be in a subordinate clause. It just happens that in more modern usage, subordinate clauses happen to be really its last holdouts. In more archaic usage, it was not unusual to find the subjunctive in a main clause, as it is found here.
I think you are totally wrong here: it's not subjunctive. It doesn't look like a subjunctive clause semantically or syntactically-- just because the form is "be" doesn't mean it's therefore a subjunctive. And no, subjunctives don't have to be in subordinate clauess, but what Drydic said was not archaic usage: the meaning expressed in "I be good and..." is entirely different from "the king's life be long and prosperous". And saying that it's some sort of ellipsis of a complement clause is the same mistake uninformed grammar teachers make when they try to correct "he sings better than me" to "he sings better than I", citing "he sings more than I do".
My money on what this is is what I think is called "regularized be", similar to what Finlay is saying. It implies a more deliberate action, with agency on the part of the subject instead of just identity.
"It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be said, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."
– The Gospel of Thomas
I don't think it's a subjunctive, I think it's used when 'be' has a meaning more similar to 'behave' (in other words more active than stative) so like the ser/estar distinction in Spanish. I use it quite a lot I've noticed "He bes annoying", "I be responsible", etc.
I wouldn't totally rule out a subjunctive that's just missing the 'if', particularly since it works so well in the future: "(If) I be responsible, I'll miss my friends". The 'if' there can be dropped, so it wouldn't surprise me if you analogised from "I be responsible I'll miss my friends" to "I be responsible I miss my friends".
However, I think the repurposing of 'be' as a more emphatic and active essive/equative verb is probably more likely. It isn't grammaticalised fully yet (hence its being so defective, and puzzling), but it's a usage seen creeping in in many place. For instance, it's marked through stress in some cases: "Please be a nun" (totally unstressed 'be', apostophic rhetorical request when you hear a knock on your door), vs "please be a nun" (slightly more stressed 'be', request for somebody to pretend to be a nun, or, if they ARE a nun, to act fully in their nun-role for a moment). Note that the increased stress is too light to be normal sentence-level emphasis (versus "I can't, I'm a nun" - "well then BE a nun!"), it's just the removal of the exceptional non-stress that is found on particles, copulas, and generally 'structural' elements, and thus shows that 'be' is being used as an actual verb. Albeit one with no past tense, and only a marginal non-imperative form. [Mostly only occuring in the continuous, "I was being a nun" vs "I was a nun"]
But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!
Actually come to think of it, Sal might be right; the OP looks like it might be a kind of subjunctive minus the if, since it's connecting an action with an outcome (I was struggling to give it a valid context earlier, which led to me not fully understanding it). But I dunno. It's all a bit confusing what applies here.
