Do-support is the phenomenon whereby, in modern English, the auxiliary verb do
is inserted in negative sentences, emphatic affirmatives and questions when
the sentence otherwise lacks an auxiliary verb. The emergence of this
construction in the Early Modern English (EME) period (1300-1700) ranks among
the most extensively studied syntactic changes in linguistics.
Ellegård(1953), the first rigorous quantitative study of the change,
constructed a large diachronic corpus of potential do-support sentences, which
enabled patterns to be noticed in the evolution of the change. Some of these
patterns were noticed by Ellegård himself - such as the fact that a specific
lexical class of verbs (with
know as the most prominent member) resists
do-support. With modern parsed corpora, it is possible to revisit
Ellegård's work, replicate it and extend it, as we will see in this presentation.
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Aaron Ecay's slides