Yep, I'm familiar with it. While I think eliminating "to be" is more than I'm willing to do, the thought process that it requires is useful. You have to figure out whether you're talking about a thing possessing a characteristic ("The chair is red"), is a member of a category ("Police officers are public servants"), being in a state ("I'm hungry"), a thing being the same thing as another thing ("The butler is the murderer!"), or any number of other conditions that we all put under the rubric of "is".
(no subject)
Date: 2013-11-08 07:35 pm (UTC)