The progress of a syntactic change English do-support*

Abstract

The English construction  with do-support in the affirmative form, in the interrogative  form,  in  the  declarative-negative  form,  and  in  the  interrogative­-negative form is a periphrastic construction. It satisfied the definition of a strengthened construction as long as it was an optional replacement of the corresponding non-strengthened construction, i.e. of forms without do-support.