The Rise and Fall of Constructions and the History of EnglishDo-Support

Abstract

Do-support is a unique characteristic of English. Many languages other than English havedo-periphrasis but not English-typedo-support. This raises the obvious question: What is special about English? The goal of this paper is to provide an account of Englishdo-support that explains whydo-support, with its attendant properties, is found uniquely in English. I review the classical derivational approaches todo-support and argue that they do not satisfactorily capture the generalizations. I suggest an alternative, non-derivational account of contemporarydo-support that makes crucial use of constructions. Finally, I propose an account of the history ofdo-support in English that characterizes the changes in terms of the content and scope of constructions. The rise ofdo-support can be understood as a consequence of the contraction and re-specialization of particular constructions in the wake of well-documented changes in the overt morphological system of the language.*