BEMA BE as main verb
Definition
“Be” used as the main verb (copular), not as auxiliary (e.g., “he was tired”, “they are hobbits”).
Detection Rules
BE as main verb (copular) — dep is not aux or auxpass.
semgrex{lemma:be; pos:/VB.*/; dep:/(?!aux|auxpass).*/}=be
pybiber
BE lemma with dep not containing aux (pybiber approach).
cql[lemma="be" & dep!="aux|auxpass"]
mfte
BE as main verb, excluding auxiliary (via dep parse) and existential “there” + BE (MFTE checks words[j-1] and words[j-2] for _EX tag). Existential exclusion handled via _EXTHERE helper. MFTE appends BEMA tag (creating e.g. _VBN BEMA), which counts separately from bare _VBN. Refines VB and VBN so BEMA-tagged tokens are excluded from residual counts. VBD/VBG/VBP/VBZ not refined: MFTE’s VBD/VBG/VBP/VBZ counts use tag frequency including BEMA-appended forms.
semgrex{lemma:be; pos:/VB.*/; dep:/(?!aux|auxpass).*/}=be
combine: _ & !_EXTHERE
Normalization
Per finite_verbs
Examples
He was a hobbit.
The walls were thick and the ceiling was low.
It was nice to just be at home.
Source: le_foll_2024
She’s irreplaceable.
Source: le_foll_2024
How was your mum on Sunday?
Source: le_foll_2024
Non-examples
She was walking through the forest.
was is progressive auxiliary, not main verb
The letter was written yesterday.
was is passive auxiliary, not main verb
Sources
- biber_1988 — Biber, Douglas (1988) : Variation across Speech and Writing
- mfte — Le Foll, Elen & Shakir, Muhammad (2023/2025) : Multi-Feature Tagger of English (MFTE) — Python version
- pybiber — Brown, David West & Reinhart, Alex (2026) : pybiber — Python package for linguistic feature extraction and Multi-Dimensional Analysis
- xiao_2009 — Xiao, Richard (2009) : Multidimensional analysis and the study of world Englishes
- bohmann_2019 — Bohmann, Axel (2019) : Variation in English Worldwide: Varieties and Genres in a Quantitative Perspective