Argument structure effects

The previous two sections presented a pair of arguments that there is a semantically bleached, structurally low auxiliarydoin the earlier stages of EME. This section will pivot to discussing the specific semantics of this auxiliary.

The argument structure of a sentence’s main verb affects the incidence ofdo-support. In order to quantify this effect, it will be necessary to operationalize a definition of argument structure. In order to do this, I picked from the list of verb spellings in the PPCHE, arranged in decreasing order of frequency, the six most frequent prototypically unaccusative verbs, and the six most frequent experiencer-subject verbs.15 _{I then}

looked through the list for all variant spellings of these verbs, in order to identify all usages of these verbs in the corpus. The frequency of these verbs in the combined EME corpus is given in Tables 4.14 and 4.15.

15_{Experiencer-subject here is used as a cover term for verbs whose subjects do not bear a canonical agent theta-role. It may turn out}

to be the case that it is possible to draw distinctions between the different members of this postulated lexical class. Its membership and definition were inspired by an effort to make a semantic generalization over the “knowclass” presented in Ellegård (1953).

Table 4.14:Unaccusative verbs in the combined corpora, pre-1700. “Total” indicates the #+caption: number of occurrences in all sentences, whereas the “With possibledo-support” column indicates the number of occurrences in potentialdo-support sentences (whether or notdo-support actually occurs in the sentence).

Verb Total With possibledo-support

arise 181 138 come 11307 7228 die 949 557 go 7694 4511 rise 380 248 stand 1798 1184

Table 4.15:Experiencer-subject verbs in the combined corpora, pre-1700. “Total” indicates the number of occurrences in all sentences, whereas the “With possibledo-support” column indicates the number of occurrences in potentialdo-support sentences (whether or notdo-support actually occurs in the sentence).

Verb Total With possibledo-support

care 193 143 doubt 1118 947 dread 32 19 fear 788 631 know 6806 4847 like 848 597

Figure 4.22: Do-support in affirmative declaratives, by argument structure type. (Some data points are off the top of the graph.)

Any verb lacking a direct object which was not a member of the unaccusative class was considered an unergative, and any verb with a direct object not on the list of experiencer-subject verbs was counted as a transitive. These verb classes behave differently in terms of their incidence ofdo-support. Figure 4.22 shows the rate of incidence ofdo-support in affirmative declaratives, stratified by argument structure types. As is evident, do-support is robust in all types except unaccusatives; in the latter type it peaks at only ~2% (by the loess smooth). I argue that this low frequency should be interpreted to mean that affirmative declarativedo-support never happens with unaccusatives. The most robust generalization is thatdo-support in affirmative declaratives is generated by a grammar which usesdoto mark the presence of an (agentive?) external argument. Since it is possible to coerce verbs into an agentive interpretation, the apparent tokens of unaccusatives withdo-support may be in fact agentive.

Figure 4.23: Do-support in negative declaratives, by argument structure type.

With negative declaratives, a similar pattern may be seen in Figure 4.23. Before 1600, there is little

do-support in unaccusative or experiencer-subject negative declaratives, whereas in the agentive-subject types the rate ofdo-support rises steadily to roughly one third of all sentences. This split begins to wane in about 1625, when unaccusatives and experiencer-subject verbs begin to move towards 100%do-support (the latter more slowly than the former). This is consistent with the tokens in this corpus being mainly generated by a “doas argument structure marker” analysis before 1575. There is an event of reanalysis, or reorganization of the grammar of speakers, at around this date, as observed by Kroch (1989) and Warner (2005). From a grammatical point of view, this reanalysis consists of reassigningdoto its modern role.16 _As

a consequence, unaccusatives and experiencer-subject verbs are pulled up to 100% over the next centuries, joining their more-advanced agentive counterparts.

16_{Warner (2005) discusses other sociolinguistic events which occur concomitantly with this analysis; his thesis is that these account}

entirely for the data, and that appeal to grammatical structure or restructuring is not necessary. Given the new richness of the data presented here, that account is not tenable, as is discussed in section 4.2.3.

Figure 4.24: Do-support in affirmative questions, by argument structure type.

The data from affirmative questions are much less abundant than either of the foregoing types. They can be seen in Figure 4.24, and are largely consistent with the other types. Negative questions and imperatives do not provide enough data for analysis.

From the data presented so far, a picture emerges of the differing behavior of unaccusatives (verbs lacking an external argument): these verbs lag in their proportion ofdo-support everywhere. The behavior of verbs with experiencer subjects presents more of a puzzle. They lag in the negative declarative context only. A tentative generalization which emerges is that these verbs lag in negative environments but not affirmative ones. Without sufficient data to measure negative questions and imperatives this generalization cannot be evaluated (the trend in these environments does go in the predicted direction, however). In any event, this examination of the data contributes to our understanding of the behavior of auxiliarydoin the early EME period (before 1600): it occurs mainly with external-argument bearing verbs, and barely at all with verbs which lack an external argument.

The reader is also referred to chapter 5 for more discussion of the boundaries of the lexical classes implicated in this analysis.