aspectual be

noun

linguistics

: the uninflected verb form be (as in "she be jogging") used in African American English and to varying degrees in some other varieties of English to indicate that an action or state is habitual or frequent : habitual be, invariant be

Aspectual be denotes habitual or iterative meaning.

—Lisa J. Green

Note: The feature of African American English called aspectual be often occurs between the subject and predicate of a sentence, and can precede noun phrases, prepositional phrases, adverbial phrases, adjectives, passive verbs, -ing verbs, and the African American English feature perfective done.

Word History

First Known Use

1979, in the meaning defined above