meaningless-do from Welsh and medieval English military history

[Amy West]

I've been reading the first chapter of McWhorter's _Our Magnificent
Bastard Tongue_   where he lays out the argument for meaningless-do
coming into English from Welsh. (As a medievalist I bristle at his
characterizations of the Middle Ages.) The part of the argument
dealing with why it doesn't show up in writing until the 1300s is, I
think, tortured and unnecessarily convoluted. My suggestion is that
it doesn't show up until then because that's about when it entered
Middle English. I think it is more likely related to England's
occupation and conquest of Wales in the 1200s and the use of Welsh
troops  in English campaigns from that point on (Adam Chapman of U of
Southampton has been investigating the Welsh soldiers in the English
armies) than to the Anglo-Saxon settling of England in the 400s-500s.
I can buy meaningless-do coming in from Welsh. I just can't buy it
not being reflected in the written language for hundreds of years.

---Amy West

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