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Given two be’s, how do they Agree?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2016

Diane Massam
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Erin Grant
Affiliation:
University of Toronto

Extract

This squib contributes to the literature on intrusive-be constructions in English, examples of which appear in (1). Notably, there are two main sub-types, commonly referred to as double-be (la) and single-be (lb) constructions, which together have been termed intrusive-be constructions (Massam 2013). In this squib, we focus on double-be constructions, in which two instances of be (bel and be2) appear adjacent to each other as in (la), and we examine the tense and agreement forms that be can take in such constructions.

Type
Squib/Notule
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association. 2015

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