Background

In Present-day Standard English, the auxiliary verb ‘do’ is used mainly in the formation of questions (‘Did you go home?’) and negatives (‘I didn't go home’). Such usages are usually referred to as being ‘regulated’ (Barber 1976:263–7), which means that use of ‘do’ is obligatory in certain sentence types (negative declaratives, positive and negative questions) and absent from others (positive declaratives). The use of auxiliary ‘do’ in positive declaratives today automatically carries emphasis (‘I DID go home’).

In early Modern English however, the use of the auxiliary was optional in all of these cases – for example questions could be formed by inversion or by the use of auxiliary ‘do’: ‘Went you home?’ versus ‘Did you go home?’. Positive declarative sentences in early Modern English could use the auxiliary without automatic implication of emphasis. Effectively early Modern speakers had a choice of two constructions whenever they formed any one of the four sentence types mentioned above. Constructions conforming to present-day usage are termed ‘regulated’, while those which would be unacceptable in Present-day Standard English are termed ‘unregulated’. Table 2.1 illustrates the two systems (see also table 2.2 for actual examples of the sentence types from early Modern texts). Inevitably it has been necessary to simplify this account of one of the most researched and most contentious areas of historical English syntax. Fuller accounts of the modern and historical systems can be found in Tieken 1987, 31–4; Quirk et al. 1985 sections 2.49–51, 3.36–7, 12.21–6; Stein 1990.