The Functions of Auxiliary Do in Middle English Poetry

A Quantitative Study

Bibliographic Data

ID21416945
AuthorsLorenzo Moretti (0000-0003-3873-1880, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume51
Issue1
Pages3-29
Publication date2023-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of English Linguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0075-4242 • E-ISSN: 1552-5457
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/00754242221139881
OpenAlexW4319013059
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited35

The higher frequency of auxiliary do in poetry than in prose in Middle English (1150-1500) is one of the puzzles of the history of this construction. Previous studies have argued that the role of auxiliary do in poems was to place the infinitive at the end of the verse to make rhyme easier. The aim of this article is to examine to what extent auxiliary do was used for rhyme purposes and, furthermore, to determine whether it had other functions. On the basis of a conditional inference tree and random forests, this paper shows that auxiliary do was indeed used as a metrical tool to place the infinitive at the end of the verse to facilitate rhyme, although the degree to which poets used auxiliary do varied from dialect to dialect. The statistical analysis reveals that the auxiliary construction served also other functions, particularly in the Eastern Midlands and Northern dialects, where do favored the integration of verbs of foreign origin and ensured the metricality of the verse by maintaining a regular distribution of the beats in the line

Art · Infinitive · Linguistics · Literature · Poetry · Rhyme · Verb · Computer Science · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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