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 -----
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'?