"To Be" Helping Verbs

Regenerative Culture Language & Oral Tradition
#1

So I’ve been reading about e-primitive and trying, as much as possible, to practice it–but I haven’t yet found an explanation about why “to be” verbs require elimination even when used as helpers–in other words, when the “to be” verb indicates a progressive tense distinction (such as in the sentence “I am working”) or a passive voice (“I was pleased to hear from you.”) and not a definition (“I am an artist”). As a helper or passive indicator, the “to be” verb doesn’t affirm Aristotle’s laws of thought, upon which most modern languages are based (1. That a thing is what it is: A is A. This became known as the premise of identity.
2. That anything is either A or not-A. This became known as the premise of the excluded middle.
3. Something cannot be both A and not-A. This became known as the premise of non-contradiction.) Right? Might there exist another unrelated pro-re-wilding reason to eliminate passive sentences and progressive verb tenses?

Thanks in advance for any explanation.

Thanks also for the insightful commentary I’ve read here. I just signed up, and I’ve learned a lot already.

#2

Lots of the essays in To Be or Not focus on the problems of the passive voice, quite apart from the problems of identification. The preview on Google Books lets you read some of the main arguments.

#3

Actually, I just found the explanation for why e-primitive doesn’t use passive sentences. That makes sense. Ignore that part of the question.

#4

Thanks for the link, Jason!

#5

Based on what I’ve read, e-primitive allows for the use of “to be” verbs as helpers provided the main verb describes action–but I notice that most people here don’t use “to be” even as a helper. Any reason?

#6

Basically, it comes down to the practical challenges of making a change. For e-prime/primitive, folks who’ve made the change successfully report that removing ALL instances of the verb to-be, rather than just fallacious ones, helps to solidify the new way of speaking. Folks like David Bourland and other early e-prime adopters struggled with the shift, because they found using it as helper verbs tended to cause it to constantly creep back into the other old uses.

Many languages have non-to-be helper verbs to describe ‘ongoing action’ tenses. It really comes down to a quirk of English and how we learn, that we struggle with this technicality.

'Nuff said?

#7

Nuff said, Willem.

Much thanks.

#8

I’m not very good at grammar, so I don’t know if this has already been covered or is self evident, but what do you use to replace the passive to be when talking aobut time.

For instnace, how would you re-word “I will do X tommorow”?

#9

[quote=“new.orangutang, post:8, topic:772”]I’m not very good at grammar, so I don’t know if this has already been covered or is self evident, but what do you use to replace the passive to be when talking aobut time.

For instnace, how would you re-word “I will do X tommorow”?[/quote]

Dude, that sounds like e-prime, to me, although, a lot of us e-primelites ply, “I ‘plan’ to do X tommorrow? I plan X tommorrow? I look forward to do X tommorrow? I’ve set aside time tomorrow to do X? Tomorrow we X?”

How does that last one sound, did I help?

#10

[quote=“new.orangutang, post:8, topic:772”]I’m not very good at grammar, so I don’t know if this has already been covered or is self evident, but what do you use to replace the passive to be when talking aobut time.

For instnace, how would you re-word “I will do X tommorow”?[/quote]

I don’t think the word “will” constitutes a “to be” verb in that sentence. It’s more like the non “to be” auxiliary verbs such as ‘can’, ‘have’, or ‘may’. “Will be”, however, as in “I will be working tomorrow” is a “to be” helper. But, as said in other posts, if you want to eliminate certain English verb tense patterns, you can get around them by saying “I plan to do X,” etc.–as Neighbor Scout suggested.

#11

Thanks Darl and Neighbour Scout, that does help. I guess I just wan’t clear on what constituted a ‘bad’ use of to be, but I get those ways that Neighbour scout mentioned, I oculd see how those would work. Thanks

#12

The word “will” in that context originally came from “I will to do X” or “it is my will to do X”, meaning simply that ai INTEND to do something. In a fully e-primitive sentence, though, ai think it better to vary the ways of saying that, as an extention of the value of diversity. This does not, imo, exclude the usage of “will” as an auxillary. Though ai like saying “Ai will to do X”, just in the interest of weakening the future tense, in favor of the present.

#13

Lately I’ve thought about the word will too, but yeah, I think it comes from the germanic vill, which more resembles want or wish than how we use will.

#14

I recently read a blog post on Language Log pointing out that English contains no standard ‘future tense,’ maybe no future tense at all.

“Instead of a future tense, English makes use of slew of verbs (auxiliary and non-auxiliary, modal and non-modal) such as be, come, go; may, shall, and will, various adjectives such as about, bound, and certain, and various idiomatic combinations involving infinitival complements. Reference to a variety of future times of different degrees of proximity can thus be achieved, often with some kind of modality (necessity or possibility) mixed in.”

See: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005471.html

It goes on to list several common & often complicated idioms. No single standard seems to exist. We cannot as easily speak about th future as we can about th present & past.

We might consider this lack of a future tense a positive feature of English. After all, th future only exists as a Great Big Guess. Between ourselves & our futures selves, we find a Nothingness (so says Sartre). Our language reflects this in most commonly using “will” which, as previously stated, implies intent. We can attempt to “will” something to happen, but we absolutely cannot speak w/ any knowledge about th future.

#15

Someone mentioned this to me before, I remember feeling a bit resistant (“No! Evil English bad! No redeeming qualities!”), but this may indeed harken back to the old roots of hunters and village people, too savvy to believe that we will ever know the future.

In Chinuk Wawa, a local indigenous creole, one never says “I go fishing”, or “I go hunting”. You say “I go to look at deer”, or “I go boating”, so as not to communicate the arrogance of claiming that you know that will actually ‘hunt’ or ‘fish’.

Now that I think of it, as a hunter-gatherer, when would you ever turn down food? No matter where you went, or what you did, you’d accept the offering of a deer’s body, or a fish. So really, you really only did go for walks and sit in boats, hanging out until some friend decided to feed your family.

Anyway, thanks for your comment on English’s future tense!

Old English Language
#16

English has some good things going for it. Just a short 1500 years ago, the language got its start with some of Europe’s least civilized, semi-wild tribes. Compare English to Japanese or Spanish, where you must confess your inferior social status in a well-ordered hierarchy just to speak with proper grammar. Compared to that, English gets you halfway home.

#17

mwahahha, yes, yes, just a few simple things await…kill the verb to be, verbify calvin-hobbes-style all our nouns, and set the inanimating ‘it’ on fire to illuminate our linguistic revolution.

although i hear opinions vary ;D

#18

I like that. It implies that you understand you cannot control how things will go.

#19

i moved the old english stuff to a new topic in this same category (“old english language”). we have kinda left the “to be helping verb” subject in the dust, methinks.