Flying “DO-DO” is a “Danger”!

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Flying “DO-DO” is a “Danger”! J. Lee ABSTRACT. English verbs have changed in a way to rise and fall―in the context of both syntactics and semantics. In doing so, the syntactic valency swings and the semantic value also moves. The shift, however, changes within a limited range― primarily inflicted by the Fuzzy Binary Index (FBI) (see Lee 2014a, 2014b). To prove the assumption, this paper will term the Great Value Shift (GVS) as “DO-DO” which is a proper name for the lexical faculty.

Ⅰ Words change. Given the possibility that few language users can find it easy to speak with their ancestors, the diachronic transformation of language needs no further research to prove itself to be found valid in terms of linguistics. The problem is, however, that few or no significant findings have been offered to us―except for the systematic change in the pronunciation of the vowels of the English language, i.e., The Great Vowel Shift. From Chaucer to Shakespeare occurred the raising and fronting of the lengthened, stressed monophthongs in southern England. The nullification of the constraints given by letters found in the diachronic phonological change is, however, an exception; even not a rarity in European languages. Now, a wide range of English grammarians have sought to reveal hidden patterns behind a series of constructions, based upon syntax as well as semantics. Unfortunately, however, no serious theory in the fields has been granted in the literature as comprehensive and acceptable as the GVS. Following Lee (2014a, 2014b), this paper suggests that words transform in a way to counter-balance their antecedent meanings or accommodate new ones within a finite set of LF (Language Faculty): the Fuzzy Binary Index (FBI). To signify the syntactic, semantic movements modelled after FBI, the dodo bird will

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serve as a mnemonic to stand for the verbal vicissitudes in the context of syntax and semantics. Since the VP do was written as dōn (/do:n/) in Old English, it is not hard to infer that the shift of /do:n/ into /du:/ evidences the acceptability of the GVS. More importantly, in the context of syntax and semantics, however, the VP dōn (“do”) was a causative verb in the past. While it is true that some grammarians view the causative usage of the VP dōn as a periphrasis―as opposed to the “directly converted causative verb, as settan” (Royster 1922:328)―there is no denying the fact that a wide range of English verbs are classified into causative, or factitive, ones in spite of the absence of no discrete grammatical marker. The subject NP Money in Money can’t buy me love (The Beatles 1963) functions as a trigger which allows the dative object NP (i.e., me) to acquire the accusative object NP (i.e., love). Consequently, the VP buy is possible to be grouped into a causative VP. In contrast, the VP buy in I wish to buy a copy of the album is closer to a normal active verb. The conclusion is that the indirect usage of the VP dōn into a causative verb could be interpreted as a less-ambient way of making a verb into a factitive one. Whatever the subtle difference between a typical causative verb and a general active one, however, it may not be feasible to argue that the VP dōn tended to operate in the same way as the modern VP do does do now. Even on the level of the periphrastic insinuation of the factitive statement, we cannot find a causative usage in the current VP do. With the likely exception of the VP do in Will you do me a favor? which opens the possibility that the do could possibly be interpreted as a causative verb, our dos do not do the previous authoritative role. In the same way, the NP danger was the authorities concerned in the past, as The Oxford Dictionary of English (3rd edition, 2010; henceforth OED) and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th edition, 2014; hereafter AHD) suggest: Middle English (in the sense ‘jurisdiction or power’, specifically ‘power to harm’): from Old French dangier, based on Latin dominus ‘lord’. (ODE) Middle English daunger, power, dominion, peril, from Old French dangier, from Vulgar Latin *dominiārium, authority, power, from Latin dominium, sovereignty, from dominus, lord, master (AHD)

Surprisingly enough, a wide range of words which suffered from a change in meaning show a drastic bi-polarity, as evidenced in the arrangement of NP brutal, crime, fact, pretty, silly, and notorious, various lexicons have displayed a radical obversion of sense.

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Brutal: late 15th century (in the sense ‘relating to the lower animals’): from Old French, or from medieval Latin brutalis, from brutus ‘dull, stupid’ (see brute). Crime: Middle English (in the sense ‘wickedness, sin’): via Old French from Latin crimen ‘judgement, offence’, based on cernere ‘to judge’. Fact: late 15th century: from Latin factum, neuter past participle of facere ‘do’. The original sense was ‘an act’, later ‘a crime’, surviving in the phrase before (or after) the fact. The earliest of the current senses (‘truth, reality’) dates from the late 16th century. Pretty: Old English prættig; related to Middle Dutch pertich ‘brisk, clever’, obsolete Dutch prettig ‘humorous, sporty’, from a West Germanic base meaning ‘trick’. The sense development ‘deceitful, cunning, clever, skilful, admirable, pleasing, nice’ has parallels in adjectives such as canny, fine, nice, etc.. Silly: late Middle English (in the sense ‘deserving of pity or sympathy’): alteration of dialect seely ‘happy’, later ‘innocent, feeble’, from a West Germanic base meaning ‘luck, happiness’. The sense ‘foolish’ developed via the stages ‘feeble’ and ‘unsophisticated, ignorant’. (ODE) Usage Note: Although notorious and notoriety have been used in negative, positive, and neutral contexts since the 1500s, over the years, notorious (and to a lesser extent notoriety) has come to be used primarily in negative contexts, often with a connotation of wickedness or undesirability. In our 2011 survey, 81 percent of the Usage Panel accepted the sentence The region is notorious for its seismic disturbances, whereas only 26 percent accepted a sentence that used notorious in a situation where the circumstances for fame are positive: She is notorious for her excellent standup comedy routines. The Panel is somewhat more willing to accept notoriety in a positive context: almost half (45 percent) approved of the sentence His success on college campuses brought him enough notoriety to release a greatest hits CD. (AHD)

Flying planes can be dangerous! Or, colorless green idea sleep furiously! Or, Flying “DO-DO” can be a “Danger”! Like the alleged syntactic completeness, Lexical Faculty has evolved from the negative to the positive, and vice versa.1)2) Now, it may be worthy to note that the expletive do is a recent discovery in the history of English. As indicated by the below quote, the way to raise the dummy verb do in 1) Of course, some words show a incremental development of the related process which allows the diachronic shift to mean a gradual advancement. Detailed explanations will be given in the body of this journal. 2) The manner in which Lexical Faculty develops in the context of diachronic changes is not random; rather, the shift occurs within a constraint of a proto-type sense. For example, the VP wear can develop into the “wear-out” state: the reverse of the positive condition. However, it may not be possible to use the VP wear in the context of drink, sleep, drive, or eat. The limitation of Lexical Faculty permits us to say within the binary polarity of wearing (out): The shoes wear easily!

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front of the negative item was a rarity even in the age of the eighteenth century. Barnard, S. et al. (1825) suggest a puzzle: what is the exact valency of the emphatic role of the past tense did? §86. Do, is the auxiliary of the present tense. When used, it conveys an emphasis thus, “I do love you,” is more emphatical than “I love you” which last, therefore, is the common form when no emphasis is intended. §87. Did, is little used, but also carries an emphasis thus, “I did not intend to injure you,” is more pointed than to say, “I intended not to injure you.” Did is the aorist contracted of do, as, do-ed, did.

Apart from the controversial question, as mentioned earlier, the series of “do, does, and did” is distinguished from the previously causative VP dōn. The expletive thread never existed in the age of Old English. Therefore, it can be assumed that the verbal intensity of the verb dōn in terms of substantiveness has weakened itself to the point of the meaningless do as in Yes, I do! The omission of the VP do in I do the dishes at night will surely cause listeners to find the articulation ungrammatical, though the fragmented construction (i.e. I the dishes at night) is possible to address its intended message. However, the deletion of the structure I do in Yes, I do will lead to the emergence of the more emphatic positive item: Yes! In sum, we can conclude that the presence and the subsequent absence of a factitive usage of the VP dōn in English are a sign of the existence of FBI. Still, we should not jump to the conclusion: more concrete empirical evidence is required. The DODO cannot FLY instead, the extinct avian species can JUMP!

Ⅱ Everything changes. So does a human rendition of language. The way in which changes occur is, however, based upon the Fuzzy Bi-polarity Index (FBI). The VP jump, for example, derives from an imitative word meaning bump. In fact, the verb jump used to denote the state of being “moved or thrown with a sudden jerk”(ODE). If “imitative of the sound of feet coming into contact with the ground”(ibid), the term jump clearly displays an obversion. According to

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AHD, an obverse is: The counterpart of a proposition obtained by exchanging the affirmative for the negative quality of the whole proposition and then negating the predicate: The obverse of “Every act is predictable” is “No act is unpredictable.” And, a diachronic survey shows that the VP jump has changed from bumping to jumping as we know it now. Contrary to “Hegelian” determinism that the Wheel of Fortune, or history, rolls in a pre-fixed way, some words move back, or degrade. In conclusion, the movement of jumping was related to the secondary result of being jumped, and the current sense refers to the initial activity. In other words, the verb jump transferred from the thematic role of a patient into that of an agent in the context of agentivity.

Figure 1. The Diachronic Evolvement of JUMP

PATENT

AGENT

Being Jumped

Jumping

(the 16th century)

(NOW)

When a patient is jumped, one superficial valency is needed. On the contrary, two arguments are required to delineate the condition under which a subject jumps an object. Thus, the valency of jump has changed: from two to one. Unlike the “degraded” reversion shown by jump, the VP win upgraded its past struggling activity into the current satisfied state of winning. The Old English word winnan used to denote the state of striving or contending, coupled with subduing or acquiring. Actually, the VP winnan itself meant only the state of winning, as Harper (2014) summarizes: “be victorious,” c.1300 fusion of Old English winnan “to labor, toil, struggle for, work at, strive, fight,” and gewinnan “to gain or succeed by struggling, conquer, obtain,” both from Proto-Germanic *winn(w)an “to seek to gain” (cognates: Old Saxon winnan, Old Norse vinna, Old Frisian winna, Dutch winnen “to gain, win,” Danish vinde “to win,” Old High German winnan “to strive, struggle, fight,” German gewinnen “to gain, win,” Gothic gawinnen “to suffer, toil”)3), from PIE *wen- (1) “desire, strive for” (source of wish; see Venus). 3) Please note that the Gothic term gawinnen stays in the state of suffering or toiling.

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Figure 2. The Diachronic Evolvement of Win

PATENT

AGENT

Winnan

Winnan

(the 13th century)

(the 13th century)

SANCTION-ON PATIENT Winnan (the 13th century)

AGENT

SANCTION-OFF

Win (NOW)

In view of the thematic role, the verbs jump and win both transformed from a patient to an agent. In terms of chronology, however, the former degraded while the latter upgraded. Therefore, it may be safe to suppose that the valency of VP changes either clockwise or anti-clockwise.4) Now, let us take another word sad, for instance. The reversed theta role of the initially agentive valency is found in the construction “be sad” because the OE term sæd used to mean the “satisfied, weary” state5); the grammatical subject of the VP played the role of an agent in OE, whereas that of a patient is licensed. Thus, the agentivity also denies the Hegelian linear rule of development. The inefficiency of the limb on the part of the DODO bird can hopefully work as a good analogy to explain the ups and downs of language: the Great Value Shift (GVS). Like the fate of the VP dōn in English, which used to take a causative agent, the endangered

4) For more detailed information of diachronic development of verbal valency, see Lee (2014a, 2014b). For the synchronic evolvement, see Lee (2004, 2011). 5) “Old English sæd ‘sated, weary’, also ‘weighty, dense’, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch zat and German satt, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin satis ‘enough’. The original meaning was replaced in Middle English by the senses ‘steadfast, firm’ and ‘serious, sober’, and later ‘sorrowful’.” (ibid)

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species lost its vitality in terms of flight. The transition of the VP from the factitive strength to the periphrastic weakness could be compared with the evolutionary process by which the bird has degraded its capacity to navigate in the sky and upgraded its ability to run on the ground. By losing the power to request other to do something, the verb gained the almost essential grammatical role as Do in Do you love me? in order to question, English speakers are well-advised to start from the verb do. If not the survival of the “fittest,” the flier has transformed into the runner, or fore-runner! The fore-running of the VP do is also exampled by the auxiliary verb do as in I do not love you. In sharp contrast with the assumption of Jespersen (1917), the disappearance of the clitic n’t as in I don’t know will not produce any meaningful difference from the phonetically-fledged sentence. A large number of English users will pronounce the semi-word don as in I don’t know as /do:n/, which eqauls the accent of the Old English version of the VP do. Indeed, the recursive way could trigger the confusion of the Negative Item (NI) with the Positive Item (PI). However, the NI, i.e., n’t, does not change the pronunciation of the phoneme do in front of n’t in the face of the lessened sound of the clitic, the letter do (/do:/) is unlikely to be articulated as do (/du:/) as in Yes, I do! The clear-cut differentiation between the vowel /o:/ and /u:/ will almost never yield misunderstanding, even though the speaker completely deletes the phonetic relic of n’t at the end of don’t: NI(/ai-do:-nou/) vs. PI(/ai-du:-nou/). Aside from the logical plausability of Jespersen (1917), the salient role played by the two vowels /o:/ and /u:/ could be used as a way to symbolized the chronological development of the VP do in English. /o:/ was an intensified morpheme, change into the weakened-but-quite-vital /u:/. DO+1 vs. DO-1!

Figure 3. The Diachronic Evolvement of DO

DO+1 CAUSATIVE

DO0 ACTIVE

SANCTION-OFF

DO-1 EXPLETIVE

SANCTION-ON

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Ⅲ The “valency” of many English verbs has understandably changed as time went by. Syntactically, the VP win was not a ditransitive verb in Old English. Now, the verb win as in The book did win him fame is allowed to take one subject and two objects―dative and accusative, respectively. The syntactic transformation is concomitantly related to the grammaticality that inanimate nouns (e.g., The book) can appear as the subject NP of a structure. If not all, many English constructions beginning with an inanimate subject NP makes related verbs causatives, as evidenced by the meaning of the VP buy in Money can't buy me love (The Beatles 1963). At the same time, the struggling state of the previous VP winnan upgraded into the victorious one: the obversion from a patient into an agent. In a nutshell, the transition of the verbal intensity of the VP do can best example the GVS: DO-DO!

Appendix: More Empirical Evidence of GVS The term change shifted from a binary opposite word into a unilateral one. According to ODE and AHD: Middle English: from Old French change (noun), changer (verb), from late Latin cambiare, from Latin cambire 'barter', probably of Celtic origin. (ODE) Middle English changen, from Norman French chaunger, from Latin cambi, camb, to exchange, probably of Celtic origin. (AHD) Based upon the above quotes, it is possible to infer that the VP used to denote the reciprocal activity of “barter” (OED) or “exchange” (AHD). Like organisms whose biological sophistication sometimes is reduced to “simplicity” as exemplified by the presence of the dodo (Raphus cucullatus). Endemic to the island of Mauritius, the extinct species of flightless bird became deprived of the ability to maneuver its wings. And, language also “swings” in either a positive or a negative manner. Within a limited set of genetic pools, LF (Language Faculty) change and/or swings. Refer to the accounts cited from OED and ADH with regard to the VP swing.

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Old English swingan ‘to beat, whip’, also ‘rush’, geswing ‘a stroke with a weapon’, of Germanic origin related to German schwingen ‘brandish’. (ODE) Middle English swingen, to beat, brandish, from Old English swingan, to flog, strike, swing. (AHD) As evidenced by the German phrase eine Keule schwingen (“to cudgel”), the Germanic language still uses the VP in a way to refer to “strike with a weapon” (ODE) or “beat” (AHD). The term swing in Modern English is, however, less eligible for the activity to “brandish” something. Like the state of the biologically “unfledged” avian species, the word of the isolating language was denied the ability to go forwards. Or, the lexicon gained the capability of move back and forth. Whatever the judgement as to the direction associated with the VP swing, the ups and down of words are similar to the forsaken two wings of the dodo bird, willingly or unwillingly. It is difficult to understand the syntactic patterns of verbs but rewarding for linguists (Krifka 2003:1). The English dative alternation, however, requires more dependence upon the cross-linguistically diachronic approach based upon FBI. The Old English VP wincian used to mean to “to close one’s eyes” as opposed to the current VP wink. In addition, the VP is “of Germanic origin related to German winken ‘to wave’, also to wince [make a slight involuntary grimace or shrinking movement of the body out of pain or distress]” (ODE). In the past, the VP show denoted the activity to ‘look at’ (transitive, not factive like the current VP). The VP strike was less energetic in the sense that the lingual forefather did mean to “rub lightly” (ODE). * Syntactic Shift from a Simple Transitive into a Causative Verb Show: Old English scēawian ‘look at, inspect’, from a West Germanic base meaning ‘look’; related to Dutch schouwen and German schauen (ODE) * Semantic Shift from the Initial into the Final, or even Damaging, State Strike: Old English strīcan ‘go, flow’ and ‘rub lightly’, of West Germanic origin; related to German streichen ‘to stroke’, also to stroke. The sense ‘deliver a blow’ dates from Middle English. (ODE)

Hopefully, the above-mentioned empirical paradigm found in Lexical Faculty might offer a wide variety of grammarians, traditional or generative, the chance to detect more persistent, broader framework to understand the way the human populations have spoken.

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References Barnard, S. et al. 1825. A Polyglot Grammar: Of the Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Greek, Latin, English, French, Italian, Spanish, And German Languages. New York, Wilder & Campbell. Jespersen, O. 1917. Negation in English and other languages, in Selected Writings of Otto Jespersen (2010). New York: Routledge, 2-80. Krifka, M. 2003. Semantic and pragmatic conditions for the dative alternation. Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics 4, 1-32. Lee, J. 2014a. The LF(Linguistic Fuzziness) theory: the quantifier Certain and Russells paradox, in Proceedings of the 2014 Conference by the Linguistic Association of Korea and the Society of Modern Grammar, 95-109. Lee, J. 2014b. Fuzzy quantums in language: linguistic economics of HOMO SATI, in Proceedings of the 2014 Conference by the Linguistic Association of Korea, 107-119. Royster, J. F. 1922. Old English causative verbs. Studies in Philology 19(3), 328-356.

Further Readings Bresnana, J. and Hay, J. 2007. Gradient grammar: An effect of animacy on the syntax of give in New Zealand and American English. Lingua 118(2), 254-59. Harley, H. 1996. If you Have, you can Give, in Proceedings of WCCFL XV, edited by Brian Agbayani and Sze-Wing Tang, CSLI, Stanford, CA, 193-207. Hovav, M. P. and Levin, B. The English dative alternation: The case for verb sensitivity. Journal of Linguistics 44(1), 129-167. Mukherjee, J. 2005. English Ditransitive Verbs: Aspects of Theory, Description and a Usage-based Model. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Pinker, Steven. 1989. Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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