Bees again

Enrique Figueroa E. efiguero at CAPOMO.USON.MX
Fri Apr 18 18:48:03 UTC 1997


In Spanish, for one, we normally say "(Com-)portate bien" or "Se bueno",
with preference for the former in most varieties, I should say. Max

On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Debra Ziegeler wrote:

> The use of 'do' in
> You be good for Grandma now and if you do I'll buy you an icecream
>
> does sound a bit strange to me (a native speaker of Australian English).
>
> It looks from all this discussion as though 'be' should be given a polysemy
> analysis, in which it can sometimes be interpreted as 'become' or 'behave'.
>
> But this is highly speculative. It would be more interesting to examine
> a translation of this sentence in other languages, to see if verbs meaning
> 'be' are used in this context, especially those unrelated to English. What do
> others think?
>
> Debra Ziegeler
>



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