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Syntactic Rules

The document discusses syntactic rules in Modern English. It states that a form of the verb "do" will be used in front of an auxiliary verb only in yes/no questions, negative statements, and emphatic statements. It also explains how the use of "do" expanded over time to become obligatory for questions and negatives without auxiliary verbs, having originally emerged to mark emphatic sentences with verbs like "make".

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Yogeswary Rajendran
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590 views

Syntactic Rules

The document discusses syntactic rules in Modern English. It states that a form of the verb "do" will be used in front of an auxiliary verb only in yes/no questions, negative statements, and emphatic statements. It also explains how the use of "do" expanded over time to become obligatory for questions and negatives without auxiliary verbs, having originally emerged to mark emphatic sentences with verbs like "make".

Uploaded by

Yogeswary Rajendran
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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SYNTACTIC RULES

Syntactic rules may be added or lost.


In Modern English, a form of the verb do will not
be in front of auxiliary verb unless for three cases :
Yes/ No question Do they speak English?
Negative statement They do not speak English
Empathic statement They do speak English
Modern English is an SVO(Subject-Verb Object) language.
In Modern English, negation is expressed by adding not or
do not. We may also express negation by adding words like
never or no:
I am going I am not going
I went I did not go
I go to school I never go to school
SYNTACTIC CHANGE
When make began to take over its function as
causative verb, do came to be interpreted as
marker of empathic sentences.
- I did try, meaning Certainly I tried

DO in such cases soon became greatly overused,
as intensifiers are often overused.
- awful
- really
Generation after generation has extended this
usage until do is now almost obligatory for
questions and negatives without auxiliary verbs.

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