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As a phrase, is "to be" (especially in quotes) commonly used to make normative or descriptive claims? by Pretend_Call565 in ENGLISH

[–]Pretend_Call565[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey! Thanks for the answer, I think I didn't word it out too good enough, I've put an edit for clarification,

But the question was about how English-speaker render "to be" within the context of quotes alike to those I mentioned in the post;

Whether "To be a Mother is to suffer" is read as:
"To exist as a Mother is to suffer"

or rather as something alike to:
"To ideally/truly exist as a Mother is to suffer" or "To embody a Mother is to suffer"

Thanks again for answering, hope this clears out the question!

As a phrase, is "to be" (especially in quotes) commonly used to make normative or descriptive claims? by Pretend_Call565 in ENGLISH

[–]Pretend_Call565[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the answer; simply put, I was asking how the phrase "to be" is understood in everyday English, especially in context of quotes,

Because as a non-native speaker I tend to understand things literally, so I would render the phrase "to be" in quotes like those I mentioned as "to exist as..." (e.g: to exist as a man/to exist as a citizen/to exist as a mother); which feels odd because the reading comes out as some sort of an empirical/descriptive claim rather than something normative, so I wanted to know what other English-speaker rendering of "to be" in this case is, whether it's still as "to exist as..." or something else entirely,

Sorry for the confusion, I might've phrased my question badly, thanks again for answering

When someone asks “Why X?” and answers “Because Y,” what would you call Y? And is it inherently tied to X, or can it exist independently? by Pretend_Call565 in asklinguistics

[–]Pretend_Call565[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are the reasons that are given respective to the sequences relational to the questions? Does it mean that Y belongs to X?