To be

Nobody has yet called us on the fact that this publication, though named Word Works, has never published an issue about words as such. Or about how words work. This time we will attempt to make up for that lack in a small way. This issue is about a word, be, and its variant forms. This issue is a kind of encomium to the marvels of this little verb, so apparently simple but so complex when we begin to examine it.

The most "irregular" verb

Of all the "irregular" verbs in English, be is the most irregular of all. Its various forms are so unlike each other as to be unrecognizable. Look at them: is, am are, was, were, be, been, being. How could they possibly be related to one another? The answer is, they are not. The forms of be are so diverse because they trace their ancestry back to no less than four different verbs in Indo-European, the ancestor language spoken some 5000 years ago. The meanings of the four verbs were similar enough that, over the millennia, their forms became braided together. Their origins can be traced back to their Indo-European roots in The American Heritage Dictionary. Their cognates- related words that derived over time from the same source word can also be traced. The cognates form a set of fascinating word families.

Be, been, being come from a root meaning "to be, exist, grow." Some of the word's cognates are husband, booth, build, future, neighbor, beam, physics, phylum, and boodle.

Is, am come from a root meaning simply "to be." Some cognates are yes, soothe, sin, essence, absent, interest, present, and proud.

Are comes from a root meaning "to move, set in motion." Some cognates are earnest, orient, origin, abort, art, and hormone.

Was, were come from a root meaning "to stay, dwell, pass the night." Some cognates are Vesta (the Roman goddess of the hearth), astute, and divan.

The uses of be

Be is unusual among verbs because it has three different grammatical functions: as a "main verb," as a helping verb (auxiliary) in progressives, and as a helping verb in passives. All three uses are so common, forms of be are everywhere.

Be as main verb

We use be as the main verb in our sentences all the time. We use it in the subject + be + adverbial pattern, in sentences like "My wife is at work" and "The game is tomorrow." We use it in the subject + be + complement pattern with a noun complement, as in "Fred's mother was an acrobat," and with an adjective complement like "This fish is old." Be as a main verb is so common and natural, we don't realize how much we use it in speech. In writing, overuse of it can deaden our style. We should try to substitute other verbs. "This fish reeks" has more punch than "This fish is old." Sometimes, however, attempts to substitute a livelier verb changes our meaning. "Fred's mother was an acrobat" might be changed to "Fred's mother flew on the trapeze" or "Fred's mother starred in a tumbling act." But in a situation where all our audience wants is a simple identification, "Fred's mother was an acrobat" would be more direct and appropriate.

Be in progressives

The progressive form brings a particularly interesting bit of subtlety to English. It is formed with be plus the present participle (-ing) form of the main verb. In all its manifestations, present, past, and future, it has similar meanings, but it has the most meanings in the present.

1. Event/action in progress: "He is attending a meeting now"; "He is walking to school now."
2. Temporary activity (action that will end and therefore lacks the permanence of the simple present tense): "I'm studying geology at the University of Colorado"; "Phyllis is living with her parents."
3. Repetition or iteration in a series of similar ongoing actions: "Henry is kicking the soccer ball around the backyard."
4. Express future (when event is planned; usually with future time adverbial): "She's coming tomorrow."
5. Emotional comment on present habit (usually co- occurring with always or forever): "He's always acting up at these affairs"; "He's always able to deliver in a clutch situation." (Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman, 63)

Other languages, even those closely related to English, use the simple present for these uses. Imagine the difficulty that ESL speakers and writers have, learning the rules for these subtle uses of the progressive rules that native speakers have mastered intuitively.

Be in passives

Passives are among the most misunderstood verb forms in the language. First, a lot of people confuse them with linking verbs and progressives, simply because of the presence of be. But a passive has be as an auxiliary, not as the main verb (as in linking verbs). And the main verb is in the past participle form (eaten, watched). In addition, of course, the object of the action is placed in the subject position and the agent is placed after the verb ("The grain was eaten by the chickens," as opposed to "The chickens ate the grain").

The other misunderstanding, much more widespread, concerns whether one should use the passive or not. Many people preach that we should never use the passive. Computer grammar checkers typically flag passives and advise writers to change them. This negative attitude ignores the fact that the passive has a perfectly respectable pedigree in English. In fact, it is the required form of verbs in some professional journals in the sciences and social sciences (though in recent years the trend has been toward more active forms).

It is not hard to understand where the negative attitude toward passive comes from. Passives are, in fact, harder to read. They also make sentences more wordy, with the addition of be, the past participle ending, and by preceding the agent ("The dog was bitten by the man"). Many people also have an ethical objection to passives, because it is so easy to leave out the agent ("Mistakes were made"). Leaving out the agent allows the speaker to avoid assigning blame when somebody does something wrong.

But telling writers simply not to use passives robs them of an important tool for making their writing more graceful and coherent. In most writing situations, writers should think of the active voice as the default form, the one they should use unless they have good reason to use the passive. Mike Markel gives four situations in which the passive is to be preferred.

When the agent is clear from the context: "Students are required to take both courses."

When the agent is unknown: "The comet was first referred to in an ancient Egyptian text."

When the agent is less important than the action: "The documents were hand delivered this morning."

When a reference to the agent is embarrassing, dangerous, or in some other way inappropriate: "Incorrect data were recorded for the flow rate." (286-287)

In all four situations, the passive provides the desired sentence emphasis. Compare the sample sentences with versions converted to active voice. For instance, "The department requires students to take both courses." This rewrite focuses on the department, whereas the proper focus belongs on the students. Or: "John recorded incorrect data for the flow rate." John may have been at fault, but the only thing the sentence seems to be doing is assigning blame. That's beside the point; the proper purpose is to report the error in the data.

Passives also aid coherence among the sentences in a paragraph. Look at the passives in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. Notice how they lead the reader easily from one idea to the next.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Let's try changing the paragraph to active.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that the Creator creates all Men equal, that He endows them with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Men institute Governments among themselves, and those Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The rewrite not only sounds awkward, it gives false clues to the reader as to the important thread of meaning running through the paragraph.

. . . or not to be?

Let's end our discussion with a brief look at a movement that aims to stamp out all, or most, uses of be, a movement to promote a form of English called E-Prime.

E-Prime comes out of the field of general semantics. General semantics, theorized by Alfred Korzybski (Science and Sanity) and popularized by S. I. Hayakawa (Language in Thought and Action), rests on the assumption that language shapes and controls our view of reality. Its practitioners contend that when ideas come to us, they always come in the form of language. Further, the language in which we hear or read anything stories, jokes, arguments controls our response and the way we think about what we hear or read.

One way in which language controls thought our culture is the dominance of what general semanticist call "Aristotelian logic," the tendency to see everything in terms of dualities: black or white, is or isn't, good or bad. The duality is ingrained in our language, especially in the verb be. We think in terms of "is" and "is not," ignoring alternate ways of looking at reality. Korzybski himself targeted the widespread use of be as part of the problem with English.

General semanticists propose several methods by which we can avoid being controlled by language. One group advocates E-Prime. Using E-Prime, we cannot say "John is a jerk" or "That movie was good." The first exemplifies the "identity form" of be, the second, the "predicate form." Both kinds of statements imply strong judgments that may elicit emotional reactions; they are so subjective, they convey no real information or truth -- to an audience. Both statements say more about the speaker than about John or the movie. We might say, "What's so bad about that? People say things like that all the time, and most listeners know enough to take them with a grain of salt." True enough, but general semanticists argue that such statements present a "map" that obscures the "territory" they pretend to describe.

General semanticists, going back to Korzybski, like to use the metaphor of maps and territories. Language, they insist, is only a map of reality and is not to be confused with the actual world of things and people and actions. When we use language we create maps that can never render the territory exactly, but we should try to make our maps come as close to the territory as possible. When we hear someone call John a jerk and we disagree, we should not reply, "John is not a jerk" -- because, by doing so, we fall into the trap of just adding another inaccurate map on top of the speaker's map. Instead we should respond with questions, such as "What has John done that makes you call him a jerk?" Or "What did you like about the movie?"

Proponents of E-Prime differ about how hard a line they should take. Kellogg and Borland would stamp out all use of be, even in progressives and passives. Others are inclined to allow be in progressives, but not as a linking verb and not in passives. Others would allow passives, but would make people aware how much they overuse them.

Kenyon takes an alternate view: that many proponents of E-Prime adhere to the letter of the law but violate its spirit. For instance, if we say, "The movie was more rewarding than the novel," we are violating E-prime because we're using a form of be. To avoid it, we paraphrase: "I found the movie more rewarding than the novel." The paraphrase observes the letter of the law, but not the spirit. We are still ascribing "rewarding" to the movie as if "rewarding" were some characteristic that anyone can "find" in the movie. Kenyon next tries "I evaluate the movie as more rewarding than the novel." Now, at least, we have a term that comes closer to what we are really doing. "But even this," Kenyon decides, "still suggests a comparative judgement about properties of objects." The solution is to "get 'rewarding' back into direct personal experience and acknowledge more explicitly [that] what we usually mean by 'being rewarded' [is that] we like how we feel about it." So the paraphrase that comes closest to both the spirit and letter, of E-Prime would be: "I liked the movie better than I liked the novel."

E-Prime has attracted the notice of some writing teachers. They see it as a tool to help writers say what they mean more precisely and take the flab out of their writing style. It is a lot harder than it seems, because be is so ingrained in our habitual language. Zimmerman relates an experience with one of his students.

While grading papers, I circled each form of to be . . . and asked them to eliminate them in their revisions. The first student arrived haggard, complaining about the difficulty of the assignment, but proud that she had finally expunged the verb from her paper. As I read through the paper with her, her eyes widened in disbelief. . . : fourteen forms of to be appeared on the first page alone.

Even Kellogg and Bourland admit that E-Prime is difficult to learn to write, like learning a "new language." At first writers will write a kind of "pidgin E-Prime" and will only learn to write it with fluency and grace after considerable practice.

For all its difficulty, E-Prime can be a useful teaching tool if students are given guidance and encouragement, are allowed to practice and fail. Charles Low, at the end of an article that brings out many of the problems with trying to write E-Prime, nevertheless claims:

But when you find that you don't quite seem able to convey your meaning, or that your grammar checker keeps telling you to avoid the passive voice, consider using E-Prime. It does, to some degree, clarify our thought and meaning, and also just provides useful mental exercise, breaking adhesions to convention, and thus stimulating creativity.

A paragraph, by the way, written in pretty good E-Prime. But E-Prime is often achieved at the expense of the subtle expressiveness provided by progressives and the emphasis and coherence provided by passives.

RL Works cited

Celce-Murcia, Marianne, and Diane Larsen-Freeman. The Grammar Book. Rowley, MA: Newbury, 1983.

Kellogg, E. W. III, and D. David Bourland, Jr. "Working With E-Prime: Some Practical Notes." Etc., 47.4 (1990-91), 376-92. 11 January 2001 http:// www.generalsemantics.org/Education/ WEPrime/ htm

Low, Charles T. "E-Prime: Omitting the Verb "To Be" from English Usage." 5 January 2001. 21 January 2001 http://www.cybertap.com/ctlow/E-Prime/E- Prime.html

Markel, Mike. Technical Communication. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001.

Zimmerman, Daniel. "E-Prime as a Revision Strategy." 12 January 2001 http://www.ctlow.ca/E-Prime/zimmerman.html

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