# auxiliary verb 'do'



## mauro63

Hi everybody,
Could anyone of you tell me when did the the use of do as auxiliary come into use since as far as I know there is no other Saxon language with that feature.


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## astlanda

Can't it be Celtic substratum?


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## Frank06

Hi,
*First a minor note as moderator:*
*I changed the title of the thread, from 'auxiliary verbs' to 'auxiliary verb 'do'.*

Having said that... 


astlanda said:


> Can't it be Celtic substratum?


Why would it be due to (a) Celtic substratum? Could you please elaborate on that? I really don't know, but are there Celtic languages with a similar phenomenon (before or at the moment of the grammaticalisation of 'dummy do', i.e. the period of Early Modern English)? This (pdf file, p. 22) seems to suggest there are, but could you please give some examples and illustrations.

Here I found an explanation on 'dummy do', though it answers the 'when-question' and 'what-question' rather than the 'why-question'. What I wonder about is how to link the rather recent date of the phenomenon of dummy do with a Celtic substratum.

Groetjes,

Frank


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## Joannes

Perphrastic *do* is a relatively recent evolution (14th-15th c.). Celtic substratum may have contributed to its development but surely wasn't the only factor playing. Celtic 'do'-support is all around, not confined to the evironments of English *do*. (Remember the NICE-properties: negation, interrogative, code, emphasis. -- Yes, Breton 'do' is even excluded from negation!) 

As Frank mentioned, the date is another indication in disfavour of an analysis in too Celtic terms.


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## se16teddy

mauro63 said:


> as far as I know there is no other Saxon language with that feature.


I don't know what you mean by Saxon languages, but the auxiliary _do _is a feature of all the modern West Germanic languages (English, Dutch and German), though it is disparaged in most cases in standard German. This article explains more than you could possibly want to know about the use of the auxiliary do in modern German and the German dialects, Middle High German, Old High German, Dutch and Dutch dialects, etc. http://www.freidok.uni-freiburg.de/volltexte/1759/pdf/tun-Periphrase.pdf It quotes the following German poem, in which I count 9 uses of the auxiliary _do_. 
_du thust der deutschen noth, du thust den krieg beschreiben,_
_du thust die lange zeit mit lesen oft vertreiben,_
_und was du dichten thust, thust du den freunden weisen,_
_die thun, was du gethan, mit langen reimen preisen,_
_die sagen, das du thust berühmte bücher machen._
_wenn wir die lesen thun, thun wir unmäszig lachen,_
_warum? dieweil dein thun , wenn wir es recht betrachten,_
_ob du gleich alles thust, vor ungethan zu achten _​


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## Joannes

Periphrastic 'do' in Dutch is only dialectal and even there very marginal in comparison to the usage of English *do*. In Standard Dutch, periphrastic 'do' doesn't exist at all.

I think you will find more similarities in usage between Eng. *do* and North Germanic *gøre* / *gör* than you will compared to West Germanic *tun* / *doen*.

Still, English *do* combines being very present with being only present in certain (NICE) contexts, in a way we don't encounter in any other language - as far as I know. (As far as negation is concerned, the situation of Korean is about the same, though.)


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## se16teddy

I should have added that in German (for example) the 'periphrastic do' is not, as in modern English, used to signal emphatic, negative and interrogative verbs: it is used many kinds of grammatical contexts (though restricted to specific stylistic contexts or dialects). I understand from the Oxford English Dictionary that the restriction to emphatic, negative and interrogative contexts developed in Middle English (around the 15th century). According to the OED, the do + verb structure was _originally simply periphrastic, and equivalent to the simple tense. Found in Old English, frequent in Middle English, very frequent 1500-1700, dying out in normal prose in 18th century; but still retained in south-western dialects [of England]; also as an archaism in liturgical and legal use, and as a metrical resource in verse. _


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## Lugubert

se16teddy said:


> This article explains more than you could possibly want to know about the use of the auxiliary do in modern German and the German dialects, Middle High German, Old High German, Dutch and Dutch dialects, etc. http://www.freidok.uni-freiburg.de/volltexte/1759/pdf/tun-Periphrase.pdf


In a reader for mentally slightly handicapped children I saw in Switzerland some 40 years ago, but unfortunately was too stingy to buy at the time, there were examples like "S papi tuet läse", "S mami tuet wasche" 'Father reads', 'Mother washes dishes'. No emphasis, just a way of expressing the (continuous) present by a "do" equivalent.


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## zpoludnia swiata

There may already have been a predisposition in Germanic languages to use do as an auxiliary, even without a Celtic substrate, though this may have helped to solidify its role in English--though I don't know how "provable" that would be.
The simple past ending for week/regular verbs grew out of a use of "did" the past of "do".  The week verbs (for whatever reason) didn't seem to have past tense conjugation, so "did" (or the equivalent of did) was placed behind the verb.
Example:  play, play did > played / ask, ask did > asked.  This happened long ago before particular Germanic languages started taking shape.  Before then, the past was expressed through ablaut-- change in the vowel in the middle of the word.
Example:  take > took / eat > ate.


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## ztoptoa

May a new member, interested in this seemingly unexplained English grammatical "to do" use in the negative and interogative of the simple tenses, hubmy ask if its origin is in fact known and dted, if only approximately?  Or is it one of life's and language's unexplaine vagaries?

Thank You
JPS


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## Joannes

ztoptoa said:


> May a new member, interested in this seemingly unexplained English grammatical "to do" use in the negative and interogative of the simple tenses, hubmy ask if its origin is in fact known and dted, if only approximately?


Yes.



ztoptoa said:


> Or is it one of life's and language's unexplaine vagaries?


No.

All cleared up.. 




Periphrastic *do* in negative declaratives is found from the end of the 14th century, in direct questions: from the end of the 14th century (but it is found earlier in other cases of Subj-V-inversion).

For the full story, check out chapter 10 from Denison, D. (1993) _English historical syntax: verbal constructions._ And I found this list of additional references: I know Visser and Ellegård should be interesting for your query.


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## berndf

mauro63 said:


> ...there is no other Saxon language with that feature.





se16teddy said:


> I should have added that in German (for example) the 'periphrastic do' is not, as in modern English


This is not entirely correct. Low German has the emphatic periphrastic "do" as well. E.g.: "Ick do dat wulln" = "I do want that".


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## Joannes

berndf said:


> This is not entirely correct. Low German has the emphatic periphrastic "do" as well. E.g.: "Ick do dat wulln" = "I do want that".


 I'm a bit confused. Are you contradicting what I wrote (because I was only talking about Dutch..) or are you only contradicting what mauro63 wrote in a weird way?


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## berndf

Joannes said:


> I'm a bit confused. Are you contradicting what I wrote (because I was only talking about Dutch..) or are you only contradicting what mauro63 wrote in a weird way?


Sorry, was a copy/paste error. I didn't mean to contradict you. I corrected my above post.


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## Lugubert

berndf said:


> This is not entirely correct. Low German has the emphatic periphrastic "do" as well. E.g.: "Ick do dat wulln" = "I do want that".


So has Alemannisch. In a Swiss reader for literacy challenged children, I found, if I remember correctly,  "s papi tuet läse." for "Father reads/is reading".


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## sokol

Lugubert said:


> So has Alemannisch. In a Swiss reader for literacy challenged children, I found, if I remember correctly,  "s papi tuet läse." for "Father reads/is reading".


So have many other German dialects.

My native Austrian: "I dua des net essn." = "I do not eat this. I don't eat this."

In German standard language this however is considered bad style and therefore it's use is discouraged.
In dialects and colloquial standard language it is however a very common feature.


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## Ellis91

I read somewhere that it may have come from the (small) influence that the indigenous Celts had on the Anglo-Saxon tribes. 

English unlike any other Germanic language uses the verbs "to be" and "to do" as auxiliaries in progressive and emphatic tenses respectively which is also a very common feature in Modern Celtic languages, especially in Brythonic (Modern Welsh, Cornish and Breton). 

*Some examples in Welsh:*

I work - Gweithiaf 
I am working - Rwy'n gweithio ("to be" is used as an auxiliary in both) 

I went - Es
I did go - Gwnes i mynd ("to do" is used as an auxiliary in both) 

It's just an hypothesis I've read, but it's one way the progressive and emphatic forms could have entered the English language.


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## natkretep

Various researchers (McWhorter, Filppula, Klemola) are pushing for Celtic influence on English. (This even has a name: 'the Celtic hypothesis'.) It wasn't visible in written English initially because, they say, it affected spoken English first and it took a long time for this structure to filter into written English.

See, for example A Seibert's blog.


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## se16teddy

Yes, as the blog points out, genetic evidence shows that many or most first generation native Anglo-Saxons had British mothers and continental fathers. This may be showing all sorts of prejudices, but I can't imagine that their dads were the main ones who taught them to speak. No matter how advantageous it was to them to speak English, surely there must have been some Celtic influence on their speech.


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## berndf

natkretep said:


> Various researchers (McWhorter, Filppula, Klemola) are pushing for Celtic influence on English. (This even has a name: 'the Celtic hypothesis'.) It wasn't visible in written English initially because, they say, it affected spoken English first and it took a long time for this structure to filter into written English.
> 
> See, for example A Seibert's blog.


This is an ongoing thing in the history of both languages, English and French. In both languages it is astonishing that the once so widely spoken Celtic language family left so few traces. Researchers who hunt for such traces tend to grossly overstate there cases. Also in this case there is little evidence of Celtic influence. The arguments don't amount to much more than that it can't be excluded the Celtic influence might have played a role.

I wish them good luck and maybe one day we will understand the interaction between Celtic and proto West Germanic and Celtic and Vulgar Latin better than we do now. But the hypothesis of a Celtic substratum effect with the auxiliary _do_ is at present little more than a remote possibility. The idea that _do_-support in English has to be analysed completely differently from that in other West Germanic languages seems completely unfounded to me. The modern grammaticalisation of _do_-support has nothing to do with influence from a distant past and is much better explained by the word order change (from V2 to SVO) in English.


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## Stoggler

Ellis91 said:


> I read somewhere that it may have come from the (small) influence that the indigenous Celts had on the Anglo-Saxon tribes.
> 
> English unlike any other Germanic language uses the verbs "to be" and "to do" as auxiliaries in progressive and emphatic tenses respectively which is also a very common feature in Modern Celtic languages, especially in Brythonic (Modern Welsh, Cornish and Breton).
> 
> *Some examples in Welsh:*
> 
> I work - Gweithiaf
> I am working - Rwy'n gweithio ("to be" is used as an auxiliary in both)
> 
> I went - Es
> I did go - Gwnes i mynd ("to do" is used as an auxiliary in both)
> 
> It's just an hypothesis I've read, but it's one way the progressive and emphatic forms could have entered the English language.



[it seems strange to ask a question of a post from eight years ago]

Do we know when these auxiliaries were first used in Welsh or other Celtic languages, and how that compares to its use in English?


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## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> This is an ongoing thing in the history of both languages, English and French. In both languages it is astonishing that the once so widely spoken Celtic language family left so few traces. Researchers who hunt for such traces tend to grossly overstate there cases. Also in this case there is little evidence of Celtic influence. The arguments don't amount to much more than that it can't be excluded the Celtic influence might have played a role.



At one time it was argued, on the basis that there are no traces of Celtic in English, that the Germanic invaders, when they did not exterminate, drove the Celtic population into the Western fringes of mainland Britain. Now that evidence has emerged that that was probably not the case, a reverse argument has been put that since a sizeable number of Celts remained they must have influenced English. Whilst neither anthropology nor linguistics exists in isolation and each can throw light on the other, care has to be taken when assuming that the study of language leads to knowledge about societies long since passed or that anthropological studies can tell us who spoke what language where and when and how languages may have interacted.


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> care has to be taken when assuming that the study of language leads to knowledge about societies long since passed or that anthropological studies can tell us who spoke what language where and when and how languages may have interacted.


Indeed.


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