Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 April 2

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April 2

Origins of habitual be in AAVE

Doesn't the contrast, typical of AAVE, between is (in AAVE, generalised to all persons and numbers, and dropped under many circumstances) and be look like it was inherited straight from older forms of English? Old English definitely has a contrast between is/earon and beo/beon (beon can express a gnomic present, a future or a repeated state or action), and I thought this contrast had survived at least into Early Modern English (cf. the powers that be) – although this (gnomic/habitual) be is often misinterpreted as a subjunctive or simply described as an "alternative form" without a clear or explicitly stated semantic contrast –, and even into various modern dialects in Britain. It may have been preserved in American English dialects too at least into the 19th century, especially in Older Southern American English, and hence in AAVE. Possibly, it has simply been assumed that the contrast became obsolete already in Middle English and has not survived longer anywhere in English without actually scrutinising written and dialectal evidence closely for remainders of the contrast. However, possibly there are investigations into the subject after all. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 11:57, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

I can confirm that for several such features there have been competing explanations deriving them from historical British dialects on the one hand and African and/or creolization influences on the other. I haven't really read anything about this for 20 years or so, so I don't have any references to hand... AnonMoos (talk) 15:14, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Can you find other Middle or Early Modern uses of "be" in this sense, uses in a text that originates in English? I'm not sure about Tyndale, but KJV tends to follow the original languages rather slavishly (a stark example being Amos 4:6, "I also have given you cleanness of teeth", which is talking about teeth that are clean because they have no food to chew in time of famine, not the results of using a toothbrush), and I'm wondering whether "be" were used here because "the powers that be" would be seen as normal English, or if the translators considered "the powers that exist" unacceptable and couldn't find any other English word that would make any sense at all. Nyttend (talk) 02:04, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Nyttend -- with "powers that be", the question is presumably why it wasn't "powers that are"... AnonMoos (talk) 06:14, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

"The powers that are what?" is the response this passage might get. Be doesn't necessarily demand a following noun or adjective, but are basically does, and using it in the sense of "the powers that exist" (which, after all, is the context in this passage) would be exceptional and might cause confusion. Nyttend (talk) 19:00, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

I doubt it; the absolute or existential sense of "to be" (e.g. "I think therefore I am") was more prominent in the 17th century than it is now, and I don't know why its plausibility would depend on finite "be" vs. finite "are" being the form used. AnonMoos (talk) 23:25, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

EO talks about this.[1] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:21, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Baseball_Bugs -- at least in my browser, that URL turns up a long page of miscellaneous stuff, with only a brief mention of "the powers that be" about half-way down (where the verb is misleadingly glossed as "first person plural present indicative" -- most would consider it third person ). AnonMoos (talk) 23:25, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

"Powers that be" is mentioned twice, and one of them says that the expression comes from "Romans xiii.1" - specifically, this[2]: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:57, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

You may be interested in Albion's Seed, which is not hyperfocused on language but does have a portion on how this use of "be" was common in the southwest of England and made its way to those parts of America that were settled by people from that region (i.e. the South). -165.234.252.11 (talk) 18:31, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

I'd say it comes from slaves learning a Pidgin form of English when they arrived in America, with separate words to indicate tense preceding the verb Sheila1988 (talk) 21:34, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

• Be is a somewhat archaic subjunctive with the meaning "whatever may be". RP speakers have largely lost this, resulting in such absurdities as "I insist that he is here on time!" Hence the suspicion that "the powers that be" is special. But it's the original term, meaning whatever powers may be. The loss of this in RP is the innovation.

Baseball Bugs' examples "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers--i.e., whatever powers that exist--that be are ordained of God show that the usage is subjunctive. You simply can't say "the powers that is" or "whatever the truth may is."

@JackofOz: as a non-American who understands the subjunctive. (I should also admit, plenty of Americans are losing competence in the subjective.) μηδείς (talk) 20:12, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

You rang? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:55, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Ooh, sexy, Lurch! I thought you might agree that "whoever is in power" would regard an actual fact, while "whoever be in power" would refer to a possibility, or a counterfactual, not an actual fact. I was looking for an educated non-English, non-American, assuming you be one. μηδείς (talk) 22:05, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

I do be such an one.

I agree with what you're saying, but I allow some leeway in what is sometimes ludicrously called the "real world". Thus: I am a humble civil servant. I serve the government of the day, regardless of its politics or policies. Whoever be may be in power in a month, a year or a decade's time, I will be serving them, my health permitting. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:18, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

A little off-target, I think. Counterfactuals (which are not merely "not actual facts", but are actually not facts) are expressed by the past subjunctive (which is morphologically different from the simple past only in a single word, were, used in the first- and third-person singular). What we have here is the present subjunctive, used not to deny the factuality of the clause but merely to remove it from the assertative import of the sentence. --Trovatore (talk) 22:45, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Counterfactual does not mean false, it simply means that the locutor is simply not willing to assert whether the matter is factual or not. There's a difference between false and counterfactual, or we would not need the second word. "If he be proven guilty, and he may be, he'll be in a lot of trouble" is a counterfactual which asserts no truth or falsehood regarding the guilt itself. μηδείς (talk) 15:43, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

No, that isn't a counterfactual. A counterfactual is "if he were guilty (but he isn't of course), he would be in a lot of trouble".

I see the present subjunctive as being not so much about factuality, but more a sort of use–mention distinction. --Trovatore (talk) 18:21, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

I have little interest in targets. I prefer the surrounding undergrowth.  :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:52, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Medeis -- to most literate educated English speakers in the 18th and 19th centuries, the wording "powers that be" would strongly suggest a subjunctive reading, but this is not present in the original Greek of Romans 13:1, ἁι δε ουσαι, quasi-literally "those...existing" (here ουσαι is a female plural participle of to be, whose occurrence between two indicative verbs does not suggest any non-indicative interpretation). AnonMoos (talk) 02:00, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

• Does anyone want to explain what AAVE is? I be wondering... DuncanHill (talk) 22:37, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

  African American Vernacular English. --Trovatore (talk) 22:40, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

  Thank ee kindly zur. DuncanHill (talk) 22:43, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

I see a strawman argument here. You can't say "the powers that is" or "whatever the truth may is" because the first construction requires the use of the plural and the second requires the use of the infinitive. The subjunctive has nothing to do with it. 86.147.208.18 (talk) 12:38, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

• Thanks for the Greek AnonMoos. I will simply mention that participles like ousai often substitute for subjunctives, so I am not sure that's a counter example. And I'll grant 86's points--if--we are talking about average American vernacular English. But we're not, apparently. "The powers that be" is not a term one hears ever in Black vernacular, and was not imported from Black creole to the King James bible.

Ebonic terms like "He be trippin'" are of an entirely different, and even emphatic indicative, rather than a subjunctive. They are emphatic, not habitual. "He trippin'" is the simple indicative. "He be trippin'" is the emphatic (There's no doubt) and "He keep trippin" or "He always trippin" are the habitual forms. The best source here are the various books on linguistics by The African-American John McWhorter.

Again, the examples given are subjunctive in mode as written. Whenever you can add a "may" or "whatever" you are dealing with a subjunctive verb, as opposed to an indicative verb, which implies an actual fact, where "may" and "whatever" are impossible outside Great parts of Britain. Consider:

I insist he is here. (fact, indicative)

I insist he be here. (counterfactual demand, subjunctive)

μηδείς (talk) 15:24, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

"I insist he be here" is a third-person imperative, not a counterfactual. --Trovatore (talk) 21:17, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

No, Trovatore, "that he be here" is a subjunctive. Also, see irrealis. But it is not an imperative in this example. How is "the powers that be" an imperative? Where is the command?

Am I to accept that "Is here!" is a command, while "Be here!" simply doesn't exist except among Southerners as some sort of present indicative command? This is ridiculous.

PIE languages have only 2nd person imperatives (e and te), and the 3rd person imperatives as in Latin, which have nothing to do with the English "be" have a different source. As it stands, the "be" question of the OP has nothing to do with the subjunctive; its an emphatic, and I have given the source. μηδείς (talk) 22:17, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

I was slightly elliptical. "God save us" is a third-person imperative. This is more the indirect-discourse version of that. But it absolutely not not not an irrealis. "If he were here" is an irrealis. "I insist that he be here" is not. --Trovatore (talk) 22:40, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Maybe you weren't saying that it was an irrealis; you said "see also". But counterfactual == irrealis; they're the same thing. The present subjunctive is more like use–mention. --Trovatore (talk) 22:41, 8 April 2017 (UTC)