Our Living Language In place of the inflected forms of be, such as is and are, used in Standard English, African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and some varieties of Southern American English may use zero copula, as in He working, or an invariant be, as in He be working, instead of the Standard English He is working. As an identifying feature of the vernacular of many African Americans, invariant be has been frequently seized on by writers and commentators trying to imitate or parody black speech. However, most imitators use it simply as a substitute for is, as in John be sitting in that chair now, without realizing that within AAVE, invariant be is used primarily for habitual or extended actions set in the present. Among African Americans the form is most commonly used by working-class speakers and young persons. Since the 1980s, younger speakers have tended to restrict the use of the form to progressive verb forms (as in He be walking), whereas their parents also use it with adjectives (as in He be nice) and expressions referring to a location (as in He be at home). Younger speakers also use invariant be more exclusively to indicate habitual action, whereas older speakers more commonly omit be forms (as in He walking) or use present tense verb forms (such as He walks), sometimes with adverbs like often or usually, to indicate habituality. · The source of invariant habitual be in AAVE is still disputed. Some linguists suggest that it represents influence from finite be in the 17th- to 19th-century English of British settlers, especially those from the southwest of England. Other linguists feel that contemporaneous Irish or Scotch-Irish immigrants may have played a larger role, since their dialects mark habitual verb forms with be and do be, as in “They be shooting and fishing out at the Forestry Lakes” (archival recordings of the Royal Irish Academy) and “Up half the night he does be” (James Joyce). But some have argued that the development of invariant be in Irish English came after its development in AAVE. Other linguists believe that habitual be in AAVE may have evolved from the habitual does be construction brought to America by Caribbean Creole slaves and migrants from the 17th century on; until very recently, the construction was still in use among Gullah speakers from coastal South Carolina and Georgia, where Barbadian and other Caribbean slaves had been well-represented in the founding populations. Still other linguists suggest that invariant be is an innovation within AAVE arising in the second half of the 20th century, essentially a response to the wide range of meanings that the English progressive tense can express. See Notes at like², zero copula.