Bees

[Alan Dench]

'Bees' is a feature of my children's speech (6 ranging in age
from 6 to 13) and does appear to me to be 'more volitional' - but I
will keep listening. Eg.

        I don't like X, he always bees silly.

We live in Western Australia and apart from occasional American
television have had no exposure to BEV. I don't believe this can
be put down to interference. Nor would I suggest it is a regular
feature of Australian English.

Mind you, we also have a regular transitive verb 'to verse' in the
houshold ... as in "Joe versus the volcano", where this form shows
3sgS agreement. So we also regularly hear things like:

        I'm versing Michael in the next game!
        We versed the boys in Crash Bandicoot and really kicked!

Who needs exotic field locations?

Alan Dench
Centre for Linguistics
University of Western Australia