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Part of
Keys to the History of English: Diachronic linguistic change, morpho-syntax and lexicography
Edited by Thijs Porck, Moragh S. Gordon and Luisella Caon
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 363] 2024
► pp. 53–79

Subject-verb agreement and the rise of do-support in the period of anglicisation of Scots

| University of Edinburgh
Scots subject-verb (S-V) agreement is historically distinct from that of (Standard) English, as Older Scots employed a version of the Northern Subject Rule (NSR). It has been suggested that the NSR is a similar last-resort operation to do-support (de Haas 2011), giving rise to the question of whether do-support entered grammar competition with the NSR when it emerged in Scots. Using the new Parsed Corpus of Scottish Correspondence (1540–1750), this study explores the presence of these S-V agreement strategies in 16th–18th century Scots, and investigates the possibility that NSR constraints influence the trajectory of Scots do-support. The findings indicate that the NSR declines as do-support emerges in the PCSC data, but apparently without interference from subject type constraints.
Keywords: Scots, subject-verb agreement, Early Modern, parsed corpora, do-support, Northern Subject Rule
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1The origin and anglicisation of Scots
    • 2.2Do-support
    • 2.3The Northern Subject Rule
    • 2.4The NSR and do-support in Scots
  • 3.Hypothesis
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Corpus
    • 4.2Retrieving results: Querying
    • 4.3Retrieving results: Quantifying
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1The NSR in the PCSC
    • 5.2Do-support in the PCSC
  • 6.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 4 April 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.363.03got
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