Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

We generally place   be   among  the linguistic parts that represent actions.  But it  obviously does no such thing,  which makes it stick out from the rest of them.    Our universe requires that there be a place in a sentence  for a verb.   But where we cannot find a suitable verb, we put in  be.   But that is only syntactical bureaucracy.   We know that   be   is not really a verb.

I wonder if there are cultures that accord their  be  with its own category, like with a name other than verb?   Or does there exist such word in English already?  Do you know?