Re: [tied] Polyethnicity

Auxiliary "do" is a very late development in English. There is not a single attestation of it in the whole vast Old English corpus. It developed in the course of Middle English (out of the earlier uses of "do" as a substitutive or causative verb), _originating_ in poetry and then spreading to prose, and becoming common by the sixteenth century. It was at that time that it became a regular (if optional) auxiliary and constructions like "I may do write" were gradually abandoned.

There's nothing "creole" about Germanic. Proto-Germanic was a normally inflected language, with no evidence of having passed through a pidgin stage (this is also something that has been discussed before).

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: tgpedersen

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 2:44 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Polyethnicity

As to the "creole" nature of Germanic, note the use of (what later became) "do" in the past tense; and as an aside observation (something which was discussed once here in cybalist) the use of "do" in negative and interrogative (and emphatic) sentences in English. Actually a similar construction is used in German; it was explained in a book I once read as follows: Ole kauft Brötchen "Ole buys rolls" Ole hat Brötchen gekauft "Ole has bought rolls" Ole wird Brötchen kaufen "Ole will buy rolls" Ole soll Brötchen kaufen "Ole must buy rolls" etc therefore Ole tut Brötchen holen "Ole buys rolls" lit. "Ole does buy rolls" What "tun" does here is what "do" does in English: it acts as a place-holder, something you place where the verb should be, but you would prefer it wasn't, ie. to avoid sentences like "Donated you them her?" where the meaning-heavy verb is past your ear before you notice it, because you expected a noun or an adverb, so you don't have time to back up your parser (Germans are not overly fond of "Überantwortetest du sie ihr?" either) In the German use of "tun" the main verb gets to be where the Germans like it to be: after the object. In English: between subject and object. Perhaps we should also note the frequent use of <doen> in Dutch. This all makes me wonder how old the use of <do> as an auxilliary is in the Germanic languages (<do> is dead in Scandinavia, apart from <daad> "deed"). If they went all the way back (and remember that this is (originally) spoken English and German, thus not necessarily recorded) a contemparary "Early Germanic Without Tears" may have contained the statement: "<do> is used as a clitic in the past tense, but as a full auxilliary verb in negative and interrogative sentences".