This  qualitative  study  investigates  the  uses  of  be  in  Contemporary  English.  Based  on  this  study, one  easy  claim  and  one  more  difficult  claim  are  proposed.  The  easy  claim  is  that  the  traditional distinction between be as a lexical verb and be as an auxiliary is faulty. In particular, 'copular-be', traditionally considered to be a lexical verb, is in fact a prototypi...