invariant "be"

[George Thompson]

I see that I phrased a sentence badly: DARE has a passage from a novel
illustrating "be" as "is" or "am"; it doesn't have the story of the
disorderly woman.

GAT

On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 10:41 AM, George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu>wrote:

>
> You-uns knew that you were doomed to receive this stuff, regardless of
> whether there was a clamor for it or not.  Anyway, the clamor of one is
> enough, if it comes from Wilson.
>
>      "*Honest Thieves*." -- On Sunday morning, whilst the prisoners
> brought up by the watch were under examination, a yellow woman presented
> herself at the police office and demanded entrance.  A stiff contest
> ensued between her and the watchman attending the door, he refusing and she
> insisting on admittance; that she come there [sic] to get justice done her.
> She finally entered, came up in high style before the justice, and
> proceeded with her complaint as follows: "Justice, I be a very disorderly
> woman, I get drunk, fight, and raise hell; am not long out of Bridewell,
> and wants to go back.  I be not fit to be out of prison -- I ought now to
> be sent to penitentiary.  I want you to send me there."  It being well
> known that her complaint was substantially true, her demand of justice was
> complied with as to commitment, and she went off highly gratified, bearing
> her mittimus for Bridewell.
>
>      National Advocate, September 29, 1818, p. 2, col. 2, from the
> Columbian
>
>
> I see that DARE has this from an 1829 novel by a New Hampshire woman.  If
> I interpret the entry right, the speaker in the novel whose words are
> quoted is black.  Also earlier, from Noah Webster's Dictionary, as a rural
> and obsolete usage.
>
> But my item is free-range, neither from a dictionary or from fiction.
>
>
> GAT
>
> GAT
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 10:36 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 6:30 PM, George Thompson <gt1 at nyu.edu> wrote:
>> > How early is invariant "be" in AAVE documented?
>> >
>> I don't know, George. Hiw early is it documented?:-)
>>
>> > Or, is an instance from 1818 of interest?
>>
>> On a serious tip, though, I'd certainly be interested in seeing it.
>>
>> --
>> -Wilson
>> -----
>> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
>> to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>> -Mark Twain
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.
>



--
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org