Ask Johnson: What's that "do" thing doing here?

By R.L.G. | NEW YORK

A FRIEND writes:

For a few years I was an english teacher and I came across the dilemma of explaining the auxiliary verbs do, does and doesn't to children and adults. And when it comes to actual translation and trying to make sense of questions and answers with do, does, and doesn't - the words have no meaning.

Take the question: Do you like chicken?

and the answer: No I don't like chicken.

In Spanish, do and doesn't aren't translated because they don't exist. The question is: Te gusta el pollo? The answer: No, no me gusta el pollo.

So the dilemma made me start questioning why we even use Do or Don't or Doesn't. Because if the question was: You like chicken? And the answer: No, I not like chicken.... the meaning would be completely clear - grammatically correct or no.

So here's my point: Need we use do, don't, and doesn't as an auxiliary verb? And if not, where's the paper to strike it from the grammar books?

The short answer is, yes, we need "do" just because we do. It's part of English grammar. In this age, you can't say "Likest thou chicken?" "I like it not!" And it's quite impossible to legislate inconvenient rules out of grammar, even if we all wanted to.

Do seems nearly meaningless, but it's required in most instances of

- yes-no questions: Do you like chicken?

- The verb standing in for an understood one: Yes, I do [like chicken].

- Negative statements (that don't have another negative word like "nothing"): I don't like chicken.

It's also required in many optional cases, such as

- empahsis: I do love chicken, after all.

According to John McWhorter, in "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue", this "meaningless do", as he calls it, has been neglected in the history of English. Scholarship has mostly just noted its rise. He sets out to explain where it might have come from. After all, this use of do is extremely rare around the world. It is attested in two tiny languages elsewhere, and also happens to be found in two languages...that shared the island of Great Britain when the Germanic-speaking Anglo-saxons arrived. Welsh and (now-dead) Cornish both use their do-verb in ways highly similar to English. Nes means "did" in Welsh. And sure enough, "Did I open?" comes out Nes i agor? "I did not open" is Nes i ddim agor.

Mr McWhorter argues that it's simply too unlikely that this rare feature just appeared in English, alongside two (closely related) languages that also happened to have it, unlike nearly every language on earth. He notes that do is also required in Welsh plain past-tense verbs, as in Nes i agor, "I opened." It isn't used this way in modern English—but it was common in Shakespeare's time: "You all did see that on the Lupercal, I thrice presented him a kingly crown which he did thrice refuse."

By the by, Mr McWhorter also pins the common English progressive ("I'm reading", where most European languages would simply use "I read"), on Welsh-Cornish influence.

The story commonly told is that Anglo-Saxons utterly wiped out the Celts, pushing them to the northern and western fringes of the island, so that English shows stunningly little influence of the native languages of Britain before the Germanics arrived. The Norman French later, of course, invaded and did leave a huge influence on English. In this light, the lack of Celtic influence is an even bigger mysery. But if Mr McWhorter is right, the Welsh may have left English with two bits of grammar in more constant use than almost any other words in the language, even if they didn't give us a big storehouse of vocabulary, as French did. Something to comfort Welsh people everywhere, given this.