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영어

The diachronic changes of Verb Movement, negation, and the periphrastic DO in English were analyzed in this study. In OE and ME, the main verb moved to INFL or C, but English lost its V-Raising ability in ENE. At the end of the 15th century, the plural marking disappeared in English verb morphology. Consequently, verbs cannot move to INFL in NE. The OE negative particle ne must immediately precede the finite verb. In OE, the emphatic negator noht could occur after the verb to strengthen the preceding ne. In ME, not came to be the regular nonemphatic negator, hence preverbal ne was unnecessary and disappeared. The structure “do x”, which was first introduced by the influence of French faire x in the South-Western dialect in the late 13th century, was argued to be the origin of the periphrastic DO. The grammaticalization of the periphrastic DO was closely related to the loss of V-Raising in ENE. After the loss of V-Raising, the optional DO was grammaticalized as the NE periphrastic DO for negative sentences. When there is no auxiliary verb, DO is inserted under Tense to support the negator not in NE. This is called “DO-Support.”