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Let it be

The point?

Do not question English grammar. Accept it. Don't force making sense of it. Uses come first. Grammar comes later. Only after a certain number of people say such and such for a certain number of years does it get recorded by grammarians, who can do nothing but record it, be it something that makes sense to them or not. It's a pity, therefore, that years later, people like the Chinese learners study the language backwards, that is, grammar first (and therefore find the whole thing nonsensical to the point of apocryphal).

Now let's be fair to the English people and their lovely language. We Chinese are a very peculiar people (and I'm sure our Irish friend will agree with me on this one), too. Our language doesn't always make sense either. Take the word "brokeback", for instance. According to the Global Language Monitor (Will the Beijing Olympics Finally Eradicate Chinglish? July 31, 2008):

Recently, the Ministry of Education (MOE) accepted some 171 neologisms into the Chinese language. Words were considered only after they passed the scrutiny of a dozen scholars associated with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) Institute of Linguistics. These included a new ideogram for 'brokeback,' a word popularized from the banned movie Brokeback Mountain to indicate 'gay'.

You will find brokeback in few English-language dictionaries, but it already has been accepted into the Chinese.

Ah well, so much for talking sense. Let's get back to the real question why "be" is left in its root form in some cases and if so, can we see some more examples?