Prevailing theories link the English periphrastic auxiliary verb do historically with Old and Middle English causative do. I argue that these and other accounts are inconsistent with modern dialect evidence and an analysis of the historical record suggested by that evidence. The primary source of periphrastic do was a habitual aspect marker which itself arose from the reinterpretation of bare object nominalizations as infinitive verbs.
CITATION STYLE
Garrett, A. (1998). On the origin of auxiliary do. English Language and Linguistics. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1360674300000897
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