The rise of auxiliary DO: verb-non-raising or category-strengthening?

Richard Hudson

last updated 30 Dec 2003

Bibliographical information

Published in Transactions of the Philological Society 95, 41-72, 1997. The main ideas in this paper were presented publicly at seminars at UCL and Oxford University, and at the workshop `English Historical Syntax: What now?' in Manchester in May 1996. I should like to acknowledge comments from the participants of all these meetings, and in particular from Anthony Warner, David Denison, Robert Stockwell and an anonymous referee who all commented on an earlier written version. The same ideas and some of the same material are included in a more wide-ranging discussion in my "Inherent variability and linguistic theory", which argues more specifically for Word Grammar as a suitable theory of language structure for explaining both synchronic and diachronic variation.

Abstract

The paper contrasts two explanations for Ellegård's statistical data on the rise of auxiliary DO during the 15th and 16th centuries. One is Kroch's explanation in terms of a change on the parameter of verb-raising, which is shown to have a number of serious weaknesses. The other is Warner's explanation in terms of the gradual development of the distinction between auxiliary and full verbs. Though Kroch quotes Ellegård's figures in support of the Principles-and-Parameters analysis, they actually support Warner's view much better. The paper also considers developments in the auxiliary system since the 16th century and offers a mixture of cognitive and functional explanations for the changes since the 13th century.