Be-동사의 기원 및 발달과 문법특성

The Origin and Development of the Verb Be and Its Grammatical Properties

This paper analyzed the origin and development of the verb be and its morpho-syntactico-semantic properties from a diachronic perspective. The morphological realization of OE be forms was originated from the four different stems *es-, *er-, *bheu- and wes-. The change of wæs/was into wǣre(n)/were(n) was derived by Verner's Law and r-rhotacism. The Northern Subject Rule says that a present tense verb takes the verbal -s suffix, except when it is adjacent to the personal pronouns I, you, we, or they as its subject. This rule was activated by the representative verbal ending -s in the northern OE and by the language contact between the northern OE and the Celtic which had VSO order and 'V＋enclitic sibilant pronominal subject' sequence. The external Merge of the default inflectional form is/was in there-constructions with the plural logical subject from spoken ME was triggered by the Agree between the probe be-verb and the c-commanded goal there that denotes the third person feature information and by the partial influence of the Northern Subject Rule. In PDE, the finite form am/is/are/was/were functions either as a copula or as an auxiliary verb, whereas the nonfinite form be as a lexical verb. Such classification is justified by the asymmetry in grammaticality judgment when a be-verb phrase is deleted in process of VP-ellipsis and by the difference in semantic interpretation where the nonfinite form be denotes active/eventive meaning, but the finite form am/is/are/was/were does't.