Linguistics 300, F13, Assignment 4

In this final assignment in connection with the syntax project, you are asked to explore some question (or set of related questions) concerning the rise of do support on the basis of the coded data available to you.

Below are some questions that arise out of previous research on do support by Ellegåard, Kroch, and Warner. These are true research questions, and the answer to them is not necessarily (yet) known. You can also explore questions that are not directly related to the readings.

The same topic can be explored by more than one student, and you are welcome to discuss your research with each other, but when you write up your results, you should do so independently.

Please don't hesitate to come talk to me or Einar about your projects.

Guidelines for content and style.

  1. In Ellegård's data, it looks like the frequency of do support is quite a bit lower in the late 1500s and early 1600s than one might expect given the data in the periods both before and after. Kroch 1989 attributes the break around 1575 to a restructuring of the grammar of English (the details of which are not fully worked out). Warner 2005, on the other hand, attributes the break not to grammatical restructuring, but to the emergence of a stylistic (re-)evaluation of do. As evidence, he shows that the frequency of do support correlates with text complexity and age of author after about 1575, though not before. Do the facts in the PPCHE corroborate Warner's hypothesis?

  2. In Ellegård's data, the frequency of do support undergoes a particularly sharp drop around 1575 in negative declaratives and negative questions. In addition to the ongoing stylistic evaluation of do itself, Warner attributes this drop to stigmatization of the negative contracted forms don't, doesn't, and didn't (comparable to the stigmatization of ain't in contemporary English). An alternative hypothesis mentioned by Warner himself (2005:277) is that what was stigmatized wasn't only the contractions involving do, but rather clitic negation more generally (whether cliticized onto do or onto some other auxiliary or modal). Warner was unable to investigate this hypothesis because Ellegård's data didn't include the necessary sentences, and neither the PPCEME nor the PCEEC had been released yet. Is it possible to decide between the two hypotheses based on the data now available?

  3. A very striking fact about the rise of do suppport in English is the difference between questions and negative declaratives across all time periods. Could the difference be related to the stigmatization of the negative contractions don't, doesn't, and didn't or of clitic negation more generally?