Do-support: It's not a type of hair gel

If you went back about 600 years or so, you'd find that the word "do" was a reasonably unconflicted, straightforward, happy little verb, which most of the time did nothing more than act as a synonym for "perform," "act," or "accomplish." We still use it that way of course. We say "Do the equation," "Do my laundry," "I'll have to do something about the moths in the pantry," etc.

It was also called upon to perform auxiliary duties in positive indicative sentences (like "Then he did play the flute most winningly") or positive imperatives (as in "Do you now take up the sword for Henry.") Now we never use the latter function (unless we're being purposefully archaic) and we only use the former for certain kinds of emphasis, such as "Yes, he DID play the flute" in response to a contrary claim.

As the age of Chaucer gave way to the ages of Shakespeare and Milton, some very strange and wonderful things happened to the English language. One of these was the Great Vowel Shift, which made us stop talking like Frenchmen and start talking like us. Another was the release of "do" from its duties as a positive auxiliary and its capture and enslavement for use in negative and interrogative functions. This rearrangement in the verbal duty roster occurred over several centuries and was pretty much complete by the end of the eighteenth century.

In days of old when knights were bold, they could say things like "Why pickest thou thy nose, varlet?" "A knight pickest not his nose," or "Pick not thy nose, thou surly churl." Today, we can still say, "Why pick you your nose?" "He picks not his nose," and "Pick not your nose," but people tend to point at us and laugh when we do. That is because a "do" auxiliary is now required to form questions, negative statements, and negative commands -- unless the main verb is "is" (and sometimes "has" if you're British or a bit old fashioned). We can still say, "What is it?" but we have to say "What does it do?" "What does he have?" and "What do you mean?" Things get a little trickier with "Where has he gone?" (British) and "Where did he go?" (American), but this discrepancy gives us a peek into the process of change as it must have appeared to the people of an earlier era when "do"-volution was in full swing.

Just imagine it:

Old guy: Where went they? I see them not.
Young guy: I don't know. Why do you ask?

And that's what we language types call "do-support."

Comments

[Joan of Argghh!]

Spanish wasn't difficult to learn once I let go of the "do". It's included in the conjugations of most verbs, and the, "what think you?" phrase carries it off perfectly; if you can channel Olde English, you can see the sense in the Latin conjugations.

Not very linguistically presented, this little comment of mine, but what's a girl to do?

[John Salmon]

The "do", of course, is not required in Ebonic English, as in:

"Why you go there, bro?"