Timeline for Why a verb "to be" has a lot forms [duplicate]
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9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 25, 2019 at 13:27 | history | closed |
Be Brave Be Like Ukraine curiousdannii♦ Alex B. Luke Sawczak Sir Cornflakes |
Duplicate of What causes suppletion? | |
| Jun 21, 2019 at 18:22 | answer | added | Adam Bittlingmayer | timeline score: 1 | |
| Jun 21, 2019 at 16:58 | comment | added | Keelan | @user6726 true. I have retracted my close vote. | |
| Jun 21, 2019 at 15:27 | comment | added | user6726 | There are a lot of details specific to "be": is that what you are looking for? | |
| Jun 21, 2019 at 15:27 | comment | added | jlawler | The "verb be" doesn't change to anything. That's just a way of talking about paradigms. The fact is that people say I am instead of *I is or *I be. You can say there's a special verb "am" that means "be" but is used only in the first person singular and in the present tense, while the verb be is never used in the first person singular present tense. That sounds kind of silly, so we say they're the "same verb", but they aren't, really. They're just two different forms in the same paradigm. The story of how they got into the same paradigm is another matter. | |
| Jun 21, 2019 at 15:25 | review | Close votes | |||
| Jun 25, 2019 at 13:27 | |||||
| Jun 21, 2019 at 15:10 | comment | added | Keelan | Welcome to Linguistics.SE! This is due to a process known as suppletion which causes several roots to merge, leading to this kind of 'mixed paradigms'. In the question I linked the factors playing a role in suppletion are discussed. | |
| Jun 21, 2019 at 14:35 | review | First posts | |||
| Jun 21, 2019 at 15:24 | |||||
| Jun 21, 2019 at 14:30 | history | asked | darkhac | CC BY-SA 4.0 |