1 Li8: The Structure of English http://www.ling.cam.ac.uk/Li8 Lecture ...

Li8: The Structure of English
http://www.ling.cam.ac.uk/Li8
Lecture 2: More on Auxiliaries
Faye Chalcraft
fmc27@cam.ac.uk
1. Aspectual auxiliaries
1.1 Auxiliary Have
Auxiliary have shares all the morphological properties of its main verb counterpart:
• Subject-verb agreement:
Auxiliary have
(1) a. I have borrowed some money.
b. She ha-s borrowed some money.
Main verb have
(2) a. I have some money.
b. She ha-s some money.
• Non-finite contexts:
Auxiliary have
(3) a. She claims to have borrowed some money.
b. She doesn’t mind having borrowed some money.
c. She must have borrowed some money.
Main verb have
(4) a. She claims to have some money.
b. She doesn’t mind having some money.
c. She must have some money.
But auxiliary have eschews do-support in the NICE environments, whereas main
verb have allows, if not requires, it:
Auxiliary have:
(5) a. *She doesn’t have borrowed some money.
b. *Does he have borrowed some money?
c. *He hasn’t borrowed some money, does he?
d. *He DOES have borrowed some money.
Main verb have
(6) a. He doesn’t have the money.
b. Does he have the money?
c. He doesn’t have the money, does he?
d. He DOES have the money.
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Auxiliary have is used to form the perfect:
(7) a. He has swum the Channel.
b. He had swum the Channel.
1.2 Auxiliary Be
Auxiliary be has the same morphology as main verb be:
• Agreement
Auxiliary be
(8) a. I am invited to the party.
b. John i-s invited to the party.
Main verb be
(9) a. I am tired.
b. John i-s tired.
• Non-finite contexts
Auxiliary be
(10) a. John claims to be invited to the party
b. John doesn’t mind being invited to the party.
c. John must be invited to the party.
Main verb be
(11) a. She claims to be tired.
b. She doesn’t mind being tired.
c. She must be tired.
Significantly, main verb be and auxiliary be also pattern alike in the NICE
environments, since not even main verb be allows do-support:
Auxiliary be
(12) a. *John doesn’t be invited to the party.
b. *Does John be invited to the party?
c. *John is invited to the party, doesn’t he?
d. *John DOES be invited to the party.
Main verb be
(13) a. *She doesn’t be tired.
b. *Does she be tired?
c. *She is tired, doesn’t she?
d. *She DOES be tired.
Auxiliary be is used to form the progressive, (14), and the passive, (15):
(14) She is/was singing a song.
(15) The song is/was usually sung by Mary.
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2. Combining auxiliaries
Auxiliaries can be strung together in the following order:
MODAL – PERFECT HAVE – PROGRESSIVE BE – PASSIVE BE – MAIN VERB
Examples with all slots filled are possible:
(16) John may have been being executed.
As are examples with just some slots filled. For instance:
Combining aspect and voice:
(17) a. The song is being sung.
b. The song has been sung
c. The song has been being sung.
Combining modals and aspect:
(18) a. John might have left.
b. John might be leaving.
Combining modals and voice:
(19) a. John might be killed.
b. John might be being killed.
But auxiliaries always select for the inflectional form of the next verb in the
sequence (see Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 106):
• Modal + plain form (may leave)
• Perfect have + past participle (has left)
• Progressive be + present participle (is leaving)
• Passive be + past participle (is left)
3. Do-support
3.1 Auxiliary do
Like the other non-modal auxiliaries, auxiliary do has a main verb counterpart:
Auxiliary do
(20) a. I DO juggle.
b. He DO-ES juggle.
Main verb do
(21) a. I do the washing up.
b. He do-es the washing up.
But the differences between them are more significant than what we have seen
with have and be. Indeed, auxiliary do behaves much more like a modal, since,
unlike the aspectual auxiliaries, it lacks non-finite forms:
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Auxiliary do
(22) a. *He claims to do juggle.
b. *His doing juggle was impressive (cf. That he did juggle was
impressive).
c. *He will do juggle.
Main verb do
(23) a. He helps to do the washing up.
b. His doing the washing up was a great help.
c. He will do the washing up.
3.2 Do-support as last resort
Standard descriptions of the distribution of auxiliary do have it as a last resort
device that turns up only when there is no alternative:
(24) a. You didn’t do the washing up (cf. *you didn’t the washing up)
b. Did you do the washing up (cf. *did you the washing up?)
But note that there are some contexts in which auxiliary do appears not to be a
last resort:
3.2.1 Spurious do
(25) I, the undersigned, being of sound mind do hereby bequeath …
Spurious do is attested in English throughout the 16 th C and seems to have
persisted well into 18 th Ellegård (1953: 151), for example, suggests that do + an
infinitive was functionally synonymous with the finite main verb.
The use is retained in some south-western British dialects (e.g. Schütze 2004),
though in some such cases do may signal a habitual act:
(26) a. John visited his brother
b. John did visit his brother.
3.2.2 Propredicate do as an alternative to VP ellipsis in British English:
(27) a. John has finished, and Mary has (done) too.
b. I’m leaving early, and you should (do) too.
c. I don’t want to go tomorrow, but I probably will be (doing).
American English has something similar (see Kato & Butters 1987):
(28) To refuse to support the rebels in such circumstances, as the
Democrats have done in the case of the “contras,” does not
necessarily mean endorsement for the existing regimes.
Is propredicate do auxiliary do or a main verb pro-form?
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Reasons to think it is a main verb:
• Its morphological forms (participle and plain infinitive) are not those usually
associated with auxiliary do.
• It follows negation and adverbs, appearing in a structural position usually
associated with main verbs:
(29) I hope they will fix the computer, if they haven’t already done.
• It requires do-support in the relevant environments:
(30) He says he likes her, and I think he really does do.
Reasons to think it is an auxiliary:
• It co-occurs with stative antecedents; main verb do is an activity verb:
(31) a. Mary has always liked spaghetti. John always has done too.
b. *Mary has always liked spaghetti. John always has done it too.
• It appears in pseudogapping; main verb pro-forms don’t:
(32) a. Have they fed the lions? No, but they have done the tigers.
b. *Have they fed the lions? No, but they have done so the tigers.
So there are at least reasons for wondering whether this might be an auxiliary
use of do even though it appears alongside other auxiliaries.
4. Historical development of a class of modal auxiliaries
Diachronically, the appearance of a separate category of modals with a
distinctive set of properties is a relatively recent development.
All members of the category derive from main verbs, but up until the 16 th century
none of the properties mentioned so far characterised the modals as a class
distinct from main verbs.
For example, modals did have non-finite forms:
(33) but it sufficeth too hem to kunne her Pater Noster, …
but it suffices to them to know their Pater Noster, …
(?c1425 (?c1400) Loll. Serm. 2.325; Denison 1993:310)
You could also get more than one modal in sequence:
(34) Who this booke shall wylle lerne …
He-who this book shall wish learn ..
“He who wishes to master this book.”
(c1483 (?a1480) Caxton, Dialogues 3.37; Denison 1993 : 310)
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4.1 Lightfoot (1979)
The Old English (pre-) modals were (pretty normal) main verbs, which between
Old English and around 1500 started to undergo a set of ‘preposing changes’
which set them apart from the other members of their category:
• All the other preterite-present verbs became obsolete, leaving those that
remained as a more distinct inflectional class.
• They failed to adopt the new to-infinitive, and took a plain infinitive instead.
• They lost their ability to take (nominal) direct objects
• Their ‘past tense’ forms stopped signalling past time.
These changes made the modals exceptional, and prompted a radical reanalysis
which saw them being treated as a distinct syntactic class with the properties
associated with the modals today.
Lightfoot’s analysis has proved controversial, with various authors pointing out
that some of these developments were in evidence as early as Old English, and
questioning the claim that the effects emerged abruptly, or that they would have
been too exceptional to tolerate (see e.g. Warner 1993; Romaine 1981).
4.2 Further reorganisation of the auxiliary system (Denison 1998, 2000)
Once the process of grammaticalisation by which auxiliaries developed out of
main verbs had been completed, there has been further reorganisation of the
system. Here are some examples.
4.2.1 Loss of perfect be
The use of be to form the perfect has been in decline since Old English:
(35) Now they’re both gone and I can’t replace them
(Denison 1998: 135)
4.2.2 The emergence of new combinatory possibilities
Perfect have + passive be
Old and Middle English examples exist, but there remained a tendency to use is
+ past participle where modern English would have has been + past participle:
(36) Your Castle is surpriz’d; your Wife, and Babes | Sauagely slaughter’d:
(1623 [1606] Shakespeare, Macbeth IV.iii.204, Denison 2000: 13)
Progressive be + passive be
A late-eighteenth-century innovation:
(37) The inhabitants of Plymouth are under arms, and everything is being done
that can be.
(1779 Mrs. Harris in Lett. 1st Ld. Malmesbury (1870) I.430, Denison 2000: 15)
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This used to be expressed either using passive be + past participle (omitting
marking of progressive) or as passive be + present participle, a construction now
obsolete:
(38) He found that the coach had sunk greatly on one side, though it was still
dragged forward by the horses;
(1838–9 Dickens, Nickleby v.52, Denison 2000: 15)
(39) The house is building.
(Denison 2000: 15)
Other examples
Other combinations with date of earliest attestation from Denison (2000):
• modal + perfect have + progressive be + V: ?a1425
• modal + perfect have + passive be + V: c1300
• perfect have + progressive be + passive be + V: 1886/1929
• modal + progressive be + passive be + V: 1915
4.2.3 The loss of combinations
Gerunds of progressive forms have become ungrammatical:
(40) a. Learning Spanish has been very useful.
b. Having learned Spanish has been very useful.
c. Having been learning Spanish has been very useful.
d. *Being learning Spanish has been very useful.
But used to be possible:
(41) I being now making my new door into the entry,
(Pepys, 1660, Denison 2000)
4.2.4 Semantic developments (Traugott 1989)
Epistemic uses of modals have developed from deontic uses. The time of
emergence varies. Sculan ‘shall, should’ is used as an evidential marker in Old
English. Must and will in strongly epistemtic uses are much later:
(42) a. The fruit muste be delicious, the tree being so beautiful.
(1623 Middleton, Spanish Gipsie I, i.16, Traugott 1989: 42)
b. This will be your luggage, I suppose.
(1847 Ch. Brontë, Jane Eyre XI, Traugott 1989: 43)
References and further reading
Synchronic aspects
* Huddleston, Rodney, and Pullum, Geoffrey K. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar
of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1519–43.
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Butters, Ronald R. 1983. Syntactic change in British English propredicates.
Journal of English Linguistics 16: 1-8.
Halliday, Michael A. K., and Hasan, Ruqaiya. 1976. Cohesion in English. Harlow:
Longman.
Kato, Kazuo, and Butters, Ronald R. 1987. American instances of propredicate
do. Journal of English Linguistics 20: 212-216.
McCawley, James D. 1998 [1988]. The syntactic phenomena of English. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, chapter 8.
Schütze, Carson T. 2004. Synchronic and diachronic microvariation in English do.
Lingua 114: 495–516.
Diachronic aspects
Beths, Frank. 1999. The history of dare and the status of unidirectionality.
Linguistics 37: 1069–1110.
Denison, David. 1985. The origins of periphrastic DO: Ellegård and Visser
reconsidered. In Papers from the 4th International Conference on English
Historical Linguistics, eds. Roger Eaton, Olga Fischer, Willem Koopman
and Frederike van der Leek. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Denison, David 1993. English Historical Syntax. London: Longman. [Chapter 11]
Denison, David 1998. Syntax. The Cambridge history of the English language,
vol. 4, 1776-1997, ed. Suzanne Romaine, 92-329. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Denison, David. 2000. Combining English auxiliaries. In Pathways of Change:
Grammaticalization in English, eds. Olga Fischer, Anette Rosenbach and
Dieter Stein, 111–147. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. [Downloadable from
Denison’s website]
Kemenade van, A. 1993. The history of the English modals: a reanalysis. Folia
Linguistica Historica XIII/1-2:143-66.
Lightfoot, David W. 1979. Principles of Diachronic Syntax. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press [Chapter 2].
Nagle, S. J. 1989. Quasi-modals, marginal modals, and the diachrony of the
English modal auxiliaries. Folia Linguistica Historica 9: 93–104.
Plank, Franz. 1984. The modals story retold. Studies in Language 8: 305–64.
Roberts, Ian G. 1985. Agreement parameters and the development of English
modal auxiliaries. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 3:21–58.
Roberts, Ian. 1993. Verbs and Diachronic syntax. Dordrecht: Kluwer, Chapter 3.
Romaine, Suzanne 1981 The transparency principle: what it is and why it doesn’t
work. Lingua 55: 277-300.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1989. On the rise of epistemic meanings in English: An
example of subjectification in semantic change. Language 65: 31–55.
Warner, Anthony. 1983. Review of Lightfoot 1979. Journal of Linguistics 19: 187-
209.
Warner, Anthony. 1990. Reworking the history of the English auxiliaries. In
Papers from the 5th International Conference on English Historical
Linguistics, eds. Sylvia Adamson, Vivien Law, Nigel Vincent and Susan
Wright, 537–58. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
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