MONT002. Montgomery, Michael, and Margaret Mishoe. “'He bes took up with a Yankee girl and moved up there to New York': the verb bes in the Carolinas and its history.” American Speech 74.3 (Fall, 1999): 240-281.

Publication type: Journal article

Electronic access: Project Muse

Brief mention. This article focuses on examples of bes and be collected from White speakers in Asheboro (Randolph County, N.C.) and Myrtle Beach (Horry County, S.C.). It also surveys the literature on bes in American English, considers four hypotheses for the historical development of bes in White speakers in the Carolinas, and “conclude(s) that bes is best accounted for by a combination of our domestic and English hypotheses” (p. 242).

In relation to the Lumbee, the authors state: “Given that one group of long-term residents of Robeson County (the Lumbee Indians) have sometimes claimed to be a remnant of Sir Walter Raleigh's late-sixteenth-century 'Lost Colony' of Roanoke Island, it would be poetic justice, not to mention a remarkable linguistic occurrence, if bes in the Carolinas resembled what is found in England and could be shown to be a linguistic remnant of 'Elizabethan English.' ” (footnote 16)

This annotation was edited on: June 5, 2002

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