University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2015 A Multi-Step Analysis of the Evolution of English Do-Support Aaron William Ecay University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation Ecay, Aaron William, "A Multi-Step Analysis of the Evolution of English Do-Support" (2015). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1049. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1049 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1049 For more information, please contact [email protected]. A Multi-Step Analysis of the Evolution of English Do-Support Abstract This dissertation advances our understanding of the historical evolution and grammatical structure of English do-support through the application of novel historical data to this classical problem in historical syntax. Do-support is the phenomenon in English whereby a pleonastic auxiliary verb do is inserted in certain clause types. The phenomenon is characteristic of the modern language, and there is robust evidence that it emerged beginning in roughly the year 1500. The fine quantitative details of this emergence and the variation it engendered have been an object of study since EllegÃ¥rd (1953). From the standpoint of generative grammar, Roberts (1985), Kroch (1989), and many others have treated the emergence of do-support as a closely-following consequence of the loss of V-to-T raising in the 15th and 16th centuries. Taking a cross-linguistic perspective, I show that though the totality of English do-support is uncommon in other languages, the phenomenon may be seen as the combination of several discrete building blocks, each of which is robustly attested. From this perspective, a question is raised about the genesis of English do-support: given that the present-day phenomenon is evidently composed of several separate subcases, why should its cause be attributed solely to the loss of V-to-T raising? I argue that the earliest emergence of do-support in English is in fact attributable to a different source: a usage of do as a marker of external arguments. This explanation addresses the following points, which under earlier accounts were unexplained: * The different behavior of do-support across argument structure types. * The appearance of do-support in affirmative declaratives at a peak rate of 10%, much more than can be attributed to emphatic assertions. * The emergence of do-support from a Middle English causative. This "intermediate do" spread through the language until roughly 1575, when the loss of verb raising triggered an abrupt reanalysis which transformed the argument-structure marking do into its modern form. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Linguistics First Advisor Anthony Kroch Subject Categories Linguistics This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1049 A MULTI-STEP ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF ENGLISH DO-SUPPORT Aaron Ecay A DISSERTATION in Linguistics Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2015 Supervisor of Dissertation Anthony Kroch, Professor of Linguistics Graduate Group Chairperson Eugene Buckley, Associate Professor of Linguistics Dissertation Committee: Mark Liberman, Professor of Linguistics Charles Yang, Associate Professor of Linguistics For my parents ii This dissertation is backed up by a small army of my colleagues who have contributed inwaysboth large and small to its empirical and technical underpinnings. It is only appropriate to acknowledge their contributions here – though of course any shortcomings in the dissertation should not be attributed to them. Pieces of this work were presented at PLC 34 and 38, and DiGS 14 and 16; audience members there provided valuable feedback. I am grateful to Amy Goodwin-Davies, Kajsa Djärv, and Heimir Freyr van der Feest-Viðarsson for providing judgments on their respective native languages. Heimir also provided illuminating of the early Icelandic do-support patterns. I am grateful to Hilary Prichard for sharing her geocoding of the PPCME2 texts, and thus infecting me with enthusiasm for exploring spatial patterns of variation in historical syntactic data. Don Ringe pointed out example (81) several years ago – and thus provided a crucial inspiration for the account of intermediate do-support that developed into the core of this dissertation. Ann Taylor and Anthony Warner created an electronic version of the coding strings in Ellegård’s corpus, thus allowing me to check my results against this earlier source of data. Their hard work and generosity have been instrumental in allowing me to develop the quantitative analyses more fully. In culmination, the entirety of the Penn Parsed Corpora of Historical English (PPCHE) project deserves a distinguished mention. It would be impossible to overstate the debt that is owed, in the sense that writing this dissertation would have been impossible – indeed inconceivable – if the PPCHE did not exist. It was the elegant, thorough quantitative underpinning of English historical syntax that drew me to graduate school in the first place, making the PPCHE deeply important to me on a personal level as well. I hope to one day be able to create resources which unlocks as much potential for the field and for its future students as the PPCHE has done. I have been especially lucky to have spent nine years at Penn with some of the best teachers in the world. I am grateful to all of them, but especially to the following. Lance Nathan first introduced me to the notion of formalism in linguistics. Julie Legate deepened that acquaintance and mapped out the landscape of modern theoretical syntax. I mean that literally – her careful blackboard taxonomies were a constant source of enlightenment in her classes, and one that I can only aspire to emulate in my own career. Beatrice Santorini has been a constant since the beginning of this dissertation, hatched in her LING-300 course in the fall of 2009. She has provided unerring guidance with her ability to cut right to the heart of an issue with an incisive question. She has also fielded many emails over the years reporting errors or inconsistencies in the PPCHE files. She has always been supremely helpful in fixing the errors, even the ones that are located between my ears. My committee members each contributed to my education, and this dissertation, intheir own ways. Charles Yang through his teaching and research has impelled me to consider the “big picture” iii and how it relates to any given specific problem. Mark Liberman exposed me to big data linguistics; the results of his influence can be seen most of all in chapter 5. My fellow graduate student have made an equally important contribution to the last five years of my life. The voices and personalities of these colleagues remain in my own mental landscape, expressing someof the most crucial ideas to my scientific and personal success – ideas that they themselves helped inculcate. I will make the attempt to enumerate the most salient members of the chorus, cognizant of the factthat I will certainly fall short. Joel Wallenberg and Josef Fruehwald each served as role models in statistical methodology and corpus analysis, as well as a constant willingness to teach these skills to others. Jana Beck impressed on me the importance of the rigorous implementation and clear documentation of the technical aspects of the field. Chris Ahern was the best officemate I could have asked for, always excited to share his research with me, equally eager to hear about mine, and adept at finding conceptual links between these and any other areas of the field. Meredith Tamminga proved an excellent collaborator on the results in section 4.3.5. What’s more, her advice on intellectual and professional issues is always spot on, and her passionate drive is a source of motivation. Caitlin Light has been like a cool older sibling – there’s no other way to describe that mix of advice, inspiration, and camaraderie. Brittany McLaughlin and I made friends on my first day of graduate school, and she’s been there for me ever since. Similarly, I met Betsy Sneller on her first day of graduate school. I could not ask for a better friend. Finally, I want to thank all the folks at3810 Walnut for their companionship. My parents have been my first and most important role models. They have always emphasized the value of education, and have sacrificed willingly of themselves so that I might pursue it. That’s why I’ve dedicated this dissertation to them. I love you, mom and dad. I’m also grateful beyond words to Jamie, who has given me unconditional love and support especially in the last months of the writing process. Last but by no means least, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Tony Kroch. I’ve been working with Tony for seven years now, and he has influenced my thinking, and my life, immensely. Almost everything that I know about being a linguist can be traced to him. His curiosity, versatility, and intelligence are a constant inspiration. I’ll always be proud to call myself a student of Tony Kroch. iv ABSTRACT A MULTI-STEP ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF ENGLISH DO-SUPPORT Aaron Ecay Anthony Kroch This dissertation advances our understanding of the historical evolution and grammatical structure of English do-support through the application of novel historical data to this classical problem in historical syntax. Do-support is the phenomenon in English whereby a pleonastic auxiliary verb do is inserted in certain clause types. The phenomenon is characteristic of the modern language, and there is robust evidence that it emerged beginning in roughly the year 1500.