Part of
Structure and Variation in Language ContactEdited by Ana Deumert and Stephanie Durrleman
[Creole Language Library 29] 2006
► pp. 203–224
In this paper, I describe the use of agentive be (‘If you don’t be careful, you will be caught’) in informal American English. I will show that agentive be has largely the same syntactic behavior as habitual be in AAVE (African American Vernacular English). Based on these similarities, I will conclude the paper by raising a number of questions about the origin of habitual be in AAVE.
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