Re: [tied] Do.

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 5603
Date: 2001-01-17

The second question is easier, so I'll adress it first. As English evolved towards the analytic type, "do" became necessary as a dummy element to which tense and person markers could be attached -- the analytic equivalent of verb-bound inflections. If you have do-support, there's no need to do verb-noun inversion and the order of sentence elements remains fixed (only auxiliary words move). What's really surprising is that the process stopped at a certain point and that we still say "He makes, He made" rather than "*He does make, *He did make" (I'm not talking about emphatic constructions, where do-support is normal). Such constructions would free the verb from inflectional duties altogether. "He doth make" was once equivalent to "He makes/maketh", but then the tide turned.
 
In Old English there was no auxiliary "do", but OE do:n could be used in the sense "cause to" with infinitives, just like modern causative "make". This usage was continued in Middle English. When Chaucer wrote "you do me serve" he meant "you make me serve". In early Middle English times "do" began to be additionally employed as a non-modal auxiliary, presumably because of the reanalysis of elliptic constructions like "He did arreste me" for "He did them arrest me". It was also used after modals, e.g. "I may do wryte" and in double constructions: "He did do shewe me ...". The modern system, with "do" as a typical dummy carrier (invariably used without other auxiliaries), began to take shape in the late 16th century.
 
As for the first query ... The origin of the weak preterite stem extension in Germanic is still a moot question, but whatever its origin, I think it had little to do with borrowed verbs and a lot to do with problems caused by inherited IE formations such as denominal and causative verbs, which could not form ablauting preterites the way strong verbs did. As unstressed final syllables were weakened and tense markers (*-i-T-i : *-i-T) reduced and lost, distinct preterite forms were badly needed for them, and *if* the past-tense -d- indeed reflects some form of *dHeh1-, the weak past tense may be a fossilised analytic construction ("comb" : "did comb" [schematically: comb-did > comb-d-]) that arose as a substitute for the obscured inherited preterite.
 
The choice of "do" as an auxiliary was no doubt facilitated by its semantic generalisation "place, put" > "erect, set up" > "build, make" > "do, commit, act, carry out, cause ..." and its use as a main verb substitute. The erosion of the original meaning occurs in so many branches that it may be of PIE origin.
 
Piotr
 
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Mark Odegard
To: cybalist@egroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2001 10:53 AM
Subject: [tied] Do.

English 'do' is said to descend from PIE *dheH1 (so EIEC). The
PIE sense is 'put', 'set'.

Similarly, we are taught that the Germanic weak verbs are formed on a
post-positive form of 'did', 'I sleep-did', = I slept.

So. The first question.

Is this peculiar use of 'do' evidence for the (presumptively
non-IE) Germanic substratum? When you think about it, it really is an
easy 'creole-style' way for forming/adopting verbs; you can almost
hear pre-proto-Germanic-speakers fumbling around for a way to inflect
non-native verbs in a proper IE (ablaut-ridden) manner. Humm; how many
of the 'non-IE' Germanic substrate words are verbs?

The second question is the evolution into an auxiliary verb.

The idea of 'put', 'set' is pretty intense. 'Put' is rather
spectacular as a verb, in that it always requires an indirect object.
'Set' is almost as strong. Do-support in English did not fully
organize itself until after Shakespeare. One wonders why English
waited so long, or rather, why English needed to do do-support at all.

The real question:

Why 'do'?