One of the more dicey topics McWhorter merely invents. He asks the question how did “do” or as he coined “the meaningless do” become a part of English? He traces its origins to Welsh and Cornish and English reliance on it: “So, where or where might English have gotten that meaningless do in order to whip its verbs into line?” The book argues that there is only one source: He reminds us that English “corrals its verbs into the middle of the sentence” thereby making the meaningless do, well meaningful. This can be illustrated by: “What do I know?” (verbs are underlined ). The verb to know was “whipped” by do. It is not a helper verb in the standard sense of the word.
However that is not to say that such a sentence could not be written or spoken differently: “What know me (or I)? That is also correct. The same sentence in French: “Que sais-je? The French don’t use "do" as English speakers. They use only a verb form of "to do" faire. They have other grammatical concerns such as gender agreement. This has been jettisoned from the English language by the valiant Vikings, making it slim and trim. McWhorter writes: “The lesson, quite simply, is that the conception that new ways of putting things are mistakes is an illusion.”
Don't let the Sunna set on your enthusiasm for Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue.
Article comments
1 - Ruvy
When you're not writing on politics, Heloise, you can be very entertaining.
I did study linguistics and have a very clear understanding of the points you outline in John McWhorter's book. Living in Israel, I get to see an awful of Russian, and on a candy box that we had gotten for Rosh haShana, there were ingredients in Hebrew, Polish and four different languages written in Cyrillic letters. For me this was detective work because while most of the stuff written in the Cyrillic was also written in Hebrew, there was very little in English - the language I understand best. I can read Cyrillic letters, but do not necessarily understand the words I see. Nevertheless, I wanted to know which language was which of the ones written in Cyrillic.
The chocolate candy was made in Germany and is marketed by a Polish company in Eastern Europe and Israel.
The keys to solving the puzzle were two-fold: knowing that Ukrainian has kept many of the letters from the original Cyrillic alphabet designed by the Christianity hustling Greek monks who invented it - and knowing that while Russian has six case endings for its nouns (which is why it is such a bear, even for Russians), Bulgarian has dropped its case endings and is very much like English - and a lot easier to learn. In other words, someone did to Bulgarian what the Norse invaders did to English.
One of the things that happens when you drop case endings that word order suddenly gets a whole lot more important - and the other thing that happens is that you need to use a whole lot more words. So, the list of ingredients etc., with the most words was Bulgarian. The list of ingredients etc., with the strangest set of letters was the Ukrainian. The remaining two (one had to be Russian) I deduced by looking at the pictures of the candies - described in English, Polish and Russian, the dominant Slavic language. I then matched that to the list of ingredients and candies and my puzzle was solved.
I've kept that little box ("no, Reuven we didn't throw out your precious box", said the missus as she tried to extract it from the corner of the desk drawer where it had gotten stuck) as a memento of what lingusistics has taught me - and how to use induction and deduction to solve a mystery.
Thanks for the review. If I ever have the money, I might even order the book.