Andrew Garrett

On the origin of auxiliary do

Prevailing theories link the English periphrastic auxiliary verb do historically with Old and Middle English causative do. I argue that these and other accounts are inconsistent with modern dialect evidence and an analysis of the historical record suggested by that evidence. The primary source of periphrastic do was a habitual aspect marker which itself arose from the reinterpretation of bare object nominalizations as infinitive verbs. 1

Descent and Diffusion in Language Diversification: A Study of Western Numic Dialectology

The two branches of Western Numic are the Mono and Northern Paiute languages. We argue that this taxonomic structure did not arise as usually assumed in historical linguistics, through increased differentiation brought about by changes internal to each branch, but rather that diffusion between Western and Central Numic played a crucial role in forming the Western Numic family tree. More generally, we suggest that diffusion plays a greater role in language diversification than is usually recognized.

The Rise and Fall of l Sandhi in California Algic

The two Algic languages of California, Wiyot and Yurok, have comparable external sandhi patterns whereby initial h surfaces as l after certain preverbs. We argue that h ⇒ l sandhi in each language originated by the reanalysis of final l in certain preverbs after the presence of l had become opaque. The former presence of l in these preverbs is shown by other internal evidence and Algonquian comparison. Despite the similarity of the sandhi patterns, we conclude that they do not support the hypothesis that the California languages form a subgroup within Algic.