Re: "two be"

Vasiliy Chernov wrote:

> Interesting. I've read somewhere that the usage of the regular present
> of _beon_ and the present derived from *es- (_eom_, _ert_, _is_) differed
> in Old English, but I've never understood the exact difference... Any
> pointers?
In a footnote to his talk "English and Welsh", JRRT sums up the
b-forms as having either *future* or *consuetudinal* use, noting
that Welsh behaves similarly, but the related Germanic languages
do not.  The relevant excerpts:

http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9903B&L=conlang&P=R7797

Note that the annoying "=F0" is the eth.

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