The Changes in the Use of Periphrastic Do

Abstract

This paper deals with the historical changes in the use of periphrastic do with the concept of markedness isomorphism. Battistella (1985) explains that the interrogative, nagative, and emphatic sentences are semantically marked, so do that is syntactically marked came to be used to keep the agreement of markedness in forms and contents. Bækken (1999) suggests that from the 16th century, do came to be used to solve the problems of VO split and the heaviness principle. Following the two views, the proposal of this paper is as follows: as word order was fixed in the 16th century, VO split and the violation of heaviness principles became syntactically extra marked fearures, and do was a useful tool to resolve the new marked features in order to keep the markedness isomorphism in syntax and semantics. Since then until present day, do was grammaticalized in interrogatives and negatives, and emphatic do appeared to keep the markedness isomorphism.