BE
BE is
the most irregular and also the most frequently used verb in the language. It
has eight morphologically distinct forms: am,
are, be, been, being, is, was and were,
am and is being marked for person, was and were being marked
for number.
BE has
three main roles in English:
1 as a copula. In this role,
BE introduces a complement:
He is a mechanic. I am very tall She was out.
They are in my
bad books.
When the copula
introduces a nominal, it is sometimes referred to as ‘equative BE’ because the
subject and the complement refer to the same person or thing:
Karen is a
waitress. (Karen=waitress)
It’s the
Pacific Ocean. (It=Pacific Ocean)
2
as a marker of progressive aspect. Traditionally, this BE was
referred to as ‘continuative BE’ because it was used to indicate the continuing
nature of the action described:
She is
training.
This auxiliary triggers off the use of the
present participle of the following
verb, can occur in non-finite phrases:
to be training
can exhibit
past/non-past contrasts:
She is training for the
marathon.
She was
training for the marathon.
and can
co-occur with the perfective auxiliary HAVE:
She has been training.
and the
passive auxiliary BE:
She is being trained.
3
as a marker of passive voice. Traditionally, this has been called the ‘passive
auxiliary’. In this use, BE triggers off the use of the past participle of the
following verb:
It is called
‘Fido’.
and can
exhibit past/non-past contrasts:
He was
followed home.
He is often
followed home.
Many languages
use BE existentially, that is, with the meaning of ‘exist’. This is rare in
English except in translations from Hebrew:
I am who am.
or French:
I think,
therefore I am.
See: aspect,
auxiliary, copula, irregular verb, prime verbs.
Behaviourism
The
Behaviourist School of Psychology has concentrated on the study of observable,
measurable and predictable features of behaviour in animals and human beings.
As far as language is concerned, Behaviourism
is most clearly apparent in the works of structuralists like Leonard
Bloomfield who insisted that each language should be studied in its own right
by means of rigorously applied discovery procedures. The psychologist
B.F.Skinner specifically applied the findings of behaviourist psychology to
language in Verbal Behavior (1957).
Skinner’s view suggests that language or ‘Verbal behaviour’ differs in
no fundamental way from any other type of stimulus-controlled activity. The
underlying premise is that when a child is born, its mind is empty, that all
learning is the product of environment and experience and that learning can be
facilitated by stimulation, repetition and reinforcement.
Skinner’s work suggests that children learn to speak just as pigeons
learn to play pingpong, because certain spontaneous patterns of behaviour are
elicited, conditioned, reinforced and rewarded. Gradually, according to
Skinner, children learn to generalise from sound patterns they know to sound
patterns they do not know as they acquire the language of their environment.
See: acquisition of language, Mentalism, structuralism.
better
The word better is surprisingly ambiguous in its
popular uses. It is the comparative form of good:
good better best
and can be
used both adjectivally and adverbially:
Michael is the
better talker (of the two).
Michael is
talking better now.
Better is also used to signify that
someone has recovered from an illness:
He is better now.
The question
‘How are you?’ often elicits an answer involving better which may mean ‘better than before but still not well’ or
‘completely recovered’. This type of ambiguity is normally resolved either by
the context or by the addition of a word or phrase to clarify the meaning:
I’m a lot better now but I’m
still very tired.
I’m completely better.
Better can also function as a quasi-modal, similar in meaning to must. In this function it collocates
with had and the base form of the
verb:
You’d better check the time.
This usage does
not imply a comparison but is a means of offering advice or indicating an
intention. It occurs more frequently in speech than in writing and often the had/’d is deleted:
I better go.
See: adjective,
adverb, quasi-modal.
Bible
When the word Bible applies to the Old and New
Testaments it is conventionally written with a capital letter but without
quotation marks, and the same rule applies to the individual books of the
Bible. When its meaning is extended to an authoritative work, an initial capital
letter is not required:
That book has
become the gardener’s bible.
The adjective biblical also takes lower case:
We now know a great deal
about biblical times.
The same
orthographic conventions apply to the sacred writings of other major religions,
such as the Koran, the Talmud and the Vedas.
The usual forms of reference to parts of the Bible are: the Old
Testament, the New Testament, the Ten Commandments, the Gospels, the Epistles,
and references are given according to book+ chapter+verse, thus Genesis 2:8–10,
II Kings 4:34, Psalm 22, St Luke 21:3–7. Accepted abbreviations of the names of the books of the Bible are:
Old Testament (OT)—Gen, Exod, Lev, Num, Deut, Josh, Judg, Ruth, I Sam,
II Sam, I Kgs, II Kgs, I Chron, II Chron, Ezra, Neh, Esther, Job, Ps, Prov,
Eccles, S of S, Isa, Jer, Lam, Ezek, Dan, Hos, Joel, Amos, Obad, Jonah, Micah,
Nahum, Hab, Zeph, Hag, Zech, Mal.
Apocrypha—Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, I Maccabees,
II Maccabees.
New Testament (NT)—Matt, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Rom, I Cor, II Cor,
Gal, Eph, Phil, Col, I Thess, II Thess, I Tim, II Tim, Tit, Philem, Heb, Jas, I
Pet, II Pet, I John, II John, III John, Jude, Rev/Apocalypse.
The language and imagery of
the Bible, in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and English translations, have had a profound effect on literature and on
popular usage. Although tradition suggests that biblical translations in
Britain go back to the eighth century, complete translations date only from the
sixteenth century. The translations by William Tyndale (1525) and Miles
Coverdale (1536) provided the basis for all subsequent translations up to and
including the Authorised King James Version of 1611, with the result that the
language of the King James Version was archaic even in its own day.
References and allusions to
the Bible permeate literature in English, much of which (such as Metaphysical
Poetry, Paradise Lost or The Scarlet Letter) cannot be fully
understood without a knowledge of the Bible. A number of expressions involving
biblical names are in common usage, among them Babel, the mark of Cain, David and Goliath, serving God and Mammon,
Job’s Comforter, a Judas, as wise as Solomon and a Philistine. In addition, many felicitous words and expressions
derive ultimately from Tyndale. Among these are beautiful, die the death, eat, drink and be merry, the fatted
calf, glad tidings, a land
flowing with milk and honey, peacemaker, the powers that be
and to see eye to eye.
Fixed biblical
phrases calqued from Hebrew are also
now part of the English language. These include possessives such as:
man of sorrows rock of ages
superlatives of the form:
king of kings holy of holies
and emphatic statements
involving repetition:
die the death
Eating thou shalt eat.
A number of expressions such as:
three score
years and ten
are not Hebraicisms but occur in
the Authorised Version and so tend to be associated with biblical language.
See: archaism, calque.
bibliography
A bibliography is a list of books or
articles on a particular subject. The way in which it is organised and the
items that are included depend on the purpose and scope of the compiler. The
style of a bibliography should follow existing conventions, should harmonise
with that of any notes or footnotes, and
should be consistent.
For a dissertation, a
bibliography should include not only items referred to and quoted but also any
related works. Students should endeavour to show an examiner that they are
familiar with other scholarship in the area including recent publications. For
an article or book, items specifically related to the topic should be provided
as well as any that would be of special help or interest to a reader. A
Select(ed) Bibliography lists only some of the works cited in the text.
Bibliographical items may be grouped into categories, such as ‘Primary
Sources’, ‘Secondary Sources’, ‘Original Works’ or ‘Translations’. As a rule,
however, all items should appear in a single list, organised alphabetically
according to the last name of the authors.
If no author is named,
the first major word of the title
should be used. Each entry should
begin at the left-hand margin, with subsequent lines indented five spaces.
There are two main styles of
bibliographical form:
1 the author-date or Harvard
system 2 the author-title system
When taken in
conjunction with notes or footnotes, the first system is simpler and more
economical:
1 Graham,
William (1977) The Scots Word Book, Edinburgh,
Ramsay Head Press. 2 Graham, William The
Scots Word Book. Edinburgh: Ramsay Head Press, 1977.
With format 2 full footnotes are necessary within a text, whereas with
format 1 a reference may be contained within the main body of the text:
…Graham (1977:15) or (Graham 1977:15).
The sample entries that follow use the author-date system, and the
author-title system when this differs considerably. With both, each entry
should be considered a sentence, opening with a capital letter and ending with
a full stop; titles of books and journals should be underlined and those of
articles and short poems should be given within quotation marks.
Two or more books by one author:
Page, Norman (1972) The Language
of Jane Austen, Oxford, Blackwell.
——(1973) Speech in the English
Novel, London, Longman.
For the second and subsequent books, a line rather than the author’s
name is normally used.
A book consisting of more than one
volume:
Wells, J.C. (1982) Accents of English, 3 vols., Cambridge,
England, Cambridge University Press. Wells, J.C. Accents of English. 3 vols. Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press, 1982.
A book by more than one author:
O’Donnell, W.R. and Loreto
Todd (1980) Variety in Contemporary
English, London, George Allen and Unwin.
The surname of
the second author should not be given first. An edited work:
Austen, Jane (1923) Sense and
Sensibility, ed. R.W.Chapman, London, Oxford University Press.
Subsequent reprints may be indicated if
used:
Austen, Jane
(1923, repr. 1974) Sense and Sensibility,
ed. R.W. Chapman, London, Oxford University Press.
An edition revised by someone other than
the author:
Mencken, H.L.
(1977) The American Language, one-volume
abridged edn. R.I.McDavid Jr., ed., New York, Knopf.
An edited compilation:
Ferguson, C.A.
and S.B.Heath, eds. (1981) Language in
the USA, Cambridge, England, Cambridge University Press, pp. 177–209.
A chapter or an article from a
compilation:
Cassidy, F.G.
(1982) ‘Geographical Variation of English in the United States’, English as a World Language, eds.
R.W.Bailey and M. Gรถrlach, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press.
A translation:
Pedersen, Holger (1962) The
Discovery of Language: Linguistic Science in the Nineteenth Century,
trans. J.W.Spargo,
Bloomington, Indiana, Indiana University Press.
An article in a
journal:
Parasher, S.V. (1983) ‘Indian English: Certain Grammatical, Lexical and
Stylistic Features’,
English World-Wide, IV:1, 27–42.
A book review:
Kachru, Braj B. (1983) Review of New
Englishes ed. J.B.Pride, English
World-Wide, IV:1, 97–99.
In this example and in the one immediately above, the volume number
(IV) corresponds to the year (1983) and the second number (1) indicates that it
is the first issue of the year. If the number and year do not correspond, then
the month should also be indicated (April 1983).
Two books or articles by the same author
in the same year:
Hancock, I.F. (1971a) ‘West
Africa and the Atlantic Creoles’, The
English Language in West Africa, ed. John Spencer, London, Longman, pp.
113–22.
(1971b) ‘A survey of the
pidgins and creoles of the world’, Pidginization
and Creolization of Languages, ed. Dell Hymes, Cambridge, England,
Cambridge University Press, pp. 287–92. An unpublished dissertation:
Penrith, Mary
(1980) Sub-Styles in Emma: The Nature and Values of Idiolects and
Narrative,
unpub. M.Litt. thesis, University of Lancaster.
A person preparing a bibliography may wish to include other types of
publication not listed above, such as a traditional ballad, an article in a
newspaper or a reprint of an old text. The categories above should be used as
guidelines. Some publishers omit the place of publication, but this habit can
cause problems if a reader wishes to trace the item but does not know the
country of origin. It is useful and informative to be clear, comprehensive,
precise and consistent.
See: abbreviations, dissertation, footnotes.
billion (bn), million (m), thousand (K)
In the USA billion means ‘one thousand million’,
that is, a one followed by nine zeros: 1,000,000,000. In the UK, billion traditionally referred to ‘a
million million’, that is, a one followed by twelve zeros: 1,000,000,000,000.
The US meaning is gradually replacing earlier UK usage, even in government
documents and school books. Wherever there is even a slight risk of
misunderstanding, an explanation of billion
should be provided.
A million is represented by
a one followed by six zeros.
In financial
dealings the symbol K is often used
to signify ‘thousand’, so that 2,000 pounds is referred to as £2K.
See: numbers.
black
The word black has many negative uses in English.
It can suggest pessimism in:
black
comedy/despair/humour/mood
disapproval in:
a black
list/look/mark
In trade union circles a blackleg is synonymous with a scab and if any consignment is
blacked, trade unionists will not
touch it; black can also imply
‘dirty’:
black hands
cruelty:
blackbirding (indentured labour in the
South Pacific)
Blackshirts
illegal actions:
blackmail
black market
unnatural spiritual activities:
black magic black Mass
pain or trouble:
black eye
black ice
people who do not behave as they
should:
blackguard black sheep
In traditional
European descriptions of heaven and hell, God is white, the devil is black and
sin is thought to blacken the soul.
Many of the words and phrases cited above are derived from the colour
of the clothes worn, black shirts by Nazis, black vestments by exponents of the
black Mass. Nevertheless, the equation of black
with negative associations in so many phrases and idioms probably
contributes to unconscious racism.
See: racist language.
Black English
Black English is a nonstandard variety
spoken by the majority of the USA’s 26.5 million Blacks. It is regarded by many
linguists as having evolved from a creole
once widely spoken in the USA and related to West Indian creoles and West
African pidgins. The language of Blacks in South Carolina and the Sea Islands,
locally called ‘Gullah’, is the most creole-like of all varieties of Black
English and differs sharply from the speech of the upwardly mobile Blacks,
especially in the North and on the West Coast. Yet, in spite of better
education and conditions for US Blacks since the 1960s, most still speak a
variety of English which differs from other varieties of US English.
Phonology
Many
phonological features of Black English occur in the speech of Whites,
especially poor Whites from the Southern States, but since many also occur in
the creoles of the West Indies, it seems reasonable to assume an African
influence on the speech patterns of US Blacks.
1
Black English is non-rhotic. Rhoticity is prestigious in the United States.
2
There are fewer vowel contrasts
in Black English than in US network norms, with
sure and shore being
realised as /∫o/ and dare and dear merging in
3 The
diphthong in side tends to be
monophthongised so that side is
realised as /sad/. 4 The vowel sound in words such as burst, church, clerk is realised
as a long central
vowel /ะท/ or
occasionally as a diphthong approximating to the oy sound in toying. 5
When /ฮธ, รฐ/ occur in syllable-final position, they are often replaced by /f,
v/:
 |
/smuv/—smooth
In word-initial position /ฮธ/ is
frequently replaced by /d/:
/dat/—that
6 Clusters in syllable-final
position tend to be reduced, especially when the last consonant is /t/ or /d/:
yesterday>yeserday tripped>trip
Vocabulary
The study of
Black English has been hampered by scholarly disagreements regarding how much
of the vocabulary is distinctively Black. Many believe that Black English gave
world English such words as banjo,
boogie-woogie, bug (annoy), jamboree,
jazz, jive and okay as well as a
number of items for food such as goober (nut),
okra and yam. In some Black communities, African calques such as corn stick (cob
without the ears of corn), hard ears (stubborn)
and ‘to like something bad (very
much)’ are widespread, but much of the information in this area is anecdotal
since only some aspects of Black English have been studied in depth.
Grammar
It is in the
area of grammar that most evidence has been presented in favour of a creole
origin for Black English. Among the features frequently found in Black speech
are:
1 lack of inflection in nouns for plurality or possession:
I got too many
rabbit.
He on my daddy chair.
2 fewer
pronominal contrasts, with the nominative form often functioning as nominative,
accusative and possessive:
I ain know he lose he wife. (I didn’t
know he lost his wife.) 3 tendency not to use a copula:
I tired.
She sick.
4
tendency to mark the continuity rather than
the tense of an action:
She readin’.=She is/was reading.
5
use of be
with all subjects to convey habitual action:
We be lookin’.=We’re usually looking.
He be dancin’.=He’s
usually dancing. See: creole, pidgins
and creoles, US English.
blend
Blending is a type of word
formation. It is a combination of clipping
and compounding in which new words are created by the overlap of words or
fragments of existing words:
sham+amateur→shamateur motor+hotel→motel
The fragments are not necessarily
morphemes at the time of the blend
although they may become so later if several blends are made with the same
fragments:
motor+pedal→moped motor+town→Motown
and the jocular:
motor+bike→mobike
Many blends are isolated,
one-off creations:
manimal (man+animal)
marleyvous (Marley tiles+marvellous)
but others have become or are
becoming part of the language:
Amerindian (American+Indian) breathalyser (breath+analyser)
brunch (breakfast+lunch) happenstance (happen+circumstance) smog (smoke+fog)
tawdry (St Audrey)
A notable part of the word-play
in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake involves
such various forms of blending as:
1
discontinuous—ventitillated (ventilated+titillated)
2 enclosing—voluntears (volunteers+tears)
3 overlapping—blessens
(bless+lessens)
4
punning—handmades
(handmade+hand maids)
