Random thought

[pne]

At one point, I was taking dancing lessons at the stake house.

One evening, I said to a girl who was also participating, "Hello <name>—it's nice to see you!" and she replied, "You always say that it's nice to see me when you greet me!" and I said, "Well, that's because it is." And it was: I really did be happy each time I saw her; it wasn't just a phrase.

(And yes, that past sentence is probably ungrammatical, but "I really was happy" doesn't fit my mental model of the sentence.)

Comments

[missysedai.livejournal.com]

Maybe "I really did feel happy"? It has a better flow.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Yes, I suppose that would work.

[tungol.livejournal.com]

Did you use "did be happy" instead of "was happy" because in this context being happy feels more like an action, less like a state?

That's what I think is going on in that kind of sentence; I actually presented my first-ever linguistics paper at a conference about that a couple weeks ago, but I wouldn't have expected to see the usage with "happy"; I'm more used to seeing it with things like "silly".

[pne.livejournal.com]

Did you use "did be happy" instead of "was happy" because in this context being happy feels more like an action, less like a state?

I think I used it because I wanted to use "did" to emphasis the verb -- since it's used as a mandatory auxiliary only in negative (I didn't see him) and questioning (verb-inverted: Did you see him?) sentences but is available as an emphatic in positive ones (I did see him! as opposed to: I saw him).

Also used in the likes of "Didn't you see him? -- Yes I did!", with strong emphasis on "did". So I guess I wanted to emphasise "did" here, too, even though "to be" doesn't use this auxiliary in negative or questioning sentences, and so its presence in positive sentences looks weird, too (and is presumably wrong by some standard).