meaningless-do from Welsh and medieval English military history

[Geoff Nathan]

I will not get into the historical debates on this, but can recommend an interesting take that our local syntax/semantics reading group wrestled our way through this week.  It's not well-written but has an interesting semantics-based argument for indigenous development:

DEBRA ZIEGELER (2004) Reanalysis in the history of do: A view from construction grammar Cognitive Linguistics 15–3, 529–574

Geoffrey S. Nathan
Faculty Liaison, C&IT
and Associate Professor, Linguistics Program
+1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)
+1 (313) 577-8621 (English/Linguistics)

----- "Amy West" <medievalist at W-STS.COM> wrote:

> From: "Amy West" <medievalist at W-STS.COM>
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2010 2:09:49 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
> Subject: meaningless-do from Welsh and medieval English military history
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Amy West <medievalist at W-STS.COM>
> Subject:      meaningless-do from Welsh and medieval English military
> history
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org