--- title: "Negation and Pronoun Position as a way of investigating verb" description: "Only questions that show either a raised main verb or inserted do, and that contain pronominal subjects and/or objects, are kept. 7 references." authors: ["Aisha Fathi Abugharsa"] year: 2021 venue: "Journal of the College of Arts (مجلة كلية الآداب)" source: "https://hit.misuratau.edu.ly/ojs/index.php/arts/article/view/227" doi: "10.36602/faj/2021.n18.01" licence: "CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; مجلة كلية الآداب)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/abugharsa-2021-negation-pronoun-position-way-investigating/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/abugharsa-2021-negation-pronoun-position-way-investigating/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2021](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2021/page/8/) / Negation and Pronoun Position as a way of investigating verb movement and the emergence of do support during Early Modern English # Negation and Pronoun Position as a way of investigating verb movement and the emergence of do support during Early Modern English **Authors:** [Aisha Fathi Abugharsa](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/aisha-fathi-abugharsa/) · **Year:** 2021 · **Venue:** [Journal of the College of Arts (مجلة كلية الآداب)](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/faculty-of-arts-journal/) ([(Faculty of Arts Journal) مجلة كلية الآداب - جامعة مصراتة 2021](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/faculty-of-arts-journal/2021/)) · **Publisher:** [Misurata University](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/misurata-university/) · **Licence:** [CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; مجلة كلية الآداب)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) **Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.36602/faj/2021.n18.01) · [PDF](https://hit.misuratau.edu.ly/ojs/index.php/arts/article/download/227/189) · [DOI 10.36602/faj/2021.n18.01](https://doi.org/10.36602/faj/2021.n18.01) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W3182867601) **Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14) ## Summary The paper asks whether do support in English questions was simply a consequence of losing main-verb raising (V-to-I and V-to-C movement), or whether it was partly a cause of that loss. The author collects negative interrogatives from 30 Shakespeare plays (roughly 1589–1634) using the University of Virginia Modern English Corpus search engine, filtered to drama from 1550–1650. Only questions that show either a raised main verb or inserted do, and that contain pronominal subjects and/or objects, are kept. Each example is coded by whether the pronoun stands before or after *not* and by whether do appears. The two strategies coexist in the same author. With a subject pronoun before negation, the sample is split almost evenly (51 of 89 use do). When *not* precedes the pronoun, do dominates at over 90%. All eight questions with an object pronoun before *not* use raising. The author argues that do arose to keep the verb from lifting an object pronoun alongside an adjacent subject pronoun, so do helped drive the loss of verb movement rather than merely follow it. ## Key points - Data: negative interrogatives from 30 Shakespeare plays, drawn from the Modern English Corpus hosted by the University of Virginia. The search was narrowed in stages: period and genre, then construction type (raising vs. do), then pronoun subjects/objects. - Subject pronoun above *not*: 89 sentences, with 38 (42.69%) showing verb raising and 51 (57.30%) showing do support. - Object pronoun above *not*: only 8 sentences, all with verb raising and no do. - *Not* above the subject pronoun: 16 sentences, 15 (93.75%) with do. *Not* above the object pronoun: 25 sentences, 23 (92%) with do. - The study builds on earlier accounts by Kroch, Han and Kroch (2000, two-step loss of movement, Penn-Helsinki corpus), Lightfoot (1993) and Macleod (2020, Hansard Corpus). Its prose summary of results partly conflicts with its own tables, so the tables should be trusted. ## Interesting ideas - Cross-tabulate each example by the relative order of two small markers (negator vs. pronoun) against the competing variant (raising vs. do); a cheap positional feature can reveal what conditions a syntactic choice. - Old and new constructions coexist in one author and period, so a parser should not assume a single grammar per text; archaic main-verb inversion like "know you not" is a legitimate pattern. - Narrow a large corpus in successive filters (period, genre, construction, pronoun type) to get a small minimal-contrast sample in which only the variable of interest changes. - Report raw counts beside percentages, and check prose claims against the tables; here the narrative summary and the tables disagree, and the cells of 8 and 16 items are fragile. - The do-vs-raising choice appears to depend on the pronoun configuration, which makes it a controllable stylistic variable. ## For Mova How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests: - **I1** (tree): Build diagnostic checks on where `not` (advmod) sits relative to `nsubj`/`obj` in inverted questions, and flag parses where the head verb choice conflicts with the word order. - **I2** (tokens): Make sure the tagger and lemmatizer keep a fronted lexical verb as VERB with its lemma, rather than forcing an auxiliary reading because it stands in question-initial position. - **I3** (learn): Assemble targeted evaluation slices, for example negative questions with pronoun objects, to test the parsers on rare word orders and serve as hard negative controls. - **I4** (learn): Require every evaluation report to show cell sizes and to verify textual conclusions automatically against the numbers before they enter the library. - **I5** (back): When generating archaic or Shakespearean-style questions from a meaning graph, choose between inversion and do insertion based on pronoun placement for a more period-plausible output. *Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.* ## Institutions - [Misurata University](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/misurata-university/) — University, Misratah, Libya · 2 works 📚 Shelves (2): [🎭 Arts and Humanities](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/) · 9,296 works · [🗣️ Language and Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/language-and-linguistics/) · 9,206 works 🧭 Topics (1): [English](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/english/) · 1,373 works ## Cite Cite as: Aisha Fathi Abugharsa. 2021. Negation and Pronoun Position as a way of investigating verb movement and the emergence of do support during Early Modern English. Journal of the College of Arts (مجلة كلية الآداب). The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. ```bibtex @article{abugharsa2021negation, title = {{Negation and Pronoun Position as a way of investigating verb movement and the emergence of do support during Early Modern English}}, author = {Aisha Fathi Abugharsa}, journal = {Journal of the College of Arts (مجلة كلية الآداب)}, year = {2021}, doi = {10.36602/faj/2021.n18.01}, url = {https://doi.org/10.36602/faj/2021.n18.01} } ``` - [← previous Multiword expressions as discourse markers in Hebrew and Lithuanian](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/oleskeviciene-2021-multiword-expressions-as-discourse-markers/) - [next → NLP in the DH pipeline: Transfer-learning to a Chronolect](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/rubinstein-2021-nlp-dh-pipeline-transfer-learning/) - [↑ back to papers of 2021](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2021/page/8/) ## References 7 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. Aitchison, J. (2001). Language Change: Progress or Decay?, (3 rd ed), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Aitchison%2C+J%2E+%282001%29%2E+Language+Change%3A+Progress+or+Decay%3F%2C+%283+rd+ed%29%2C+Cambridge%3A+Cambridge+University+Press%2E) 2. Ellegard, V. (1953). The Auxiliary Do: Establishment and Regulations of its Use in English. Gothenburg Studies in English. Volume 2. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Ellegard%2C+V%2E+%281953%29%2E+The+Auxiliary+Do%3A+Establishment+and+Regulations+of+its+Use+in+English%2E+Gothenburg+Studies+in+English%2E+Volume+2%2E) 3. Goodhue, D. (2019). High Negation Questions and Epistemic Bias in Espinal, M.T et al (eds) proceedings of Sin und Bedeutung 23, vol I: 469-485. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Goodhue%2C+D%2E+%282019%29%2E+High+Negation+Questions+and+Epistemic+Bias+in+Espinal%2C+M%2ET+et+al+%28eds%29+proceedings+of+Sin+und+Bedeutung+23%2C+vol+I%3A+469%2D485%2E) 4. Han, C & A. Kroch. (2000). The Rise of do-Support in English: implications for clause structure. Proceedings of the 30 th meeting of the North East Linguistics. 311-325. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Han%2C+C+%26+A%2E+Kroch%2E+%282000%29%2E+The+Rise+of+do%2DSupport+in+English%3A+implications+for+clause+structure%2E+Proceedings+of+the+30+th+meeting+of+the+North+East+Linguistics%2E+311%2D325%2E) 5. Hsieh, H and S, Shannon (2005). Three Approaches to Qualitative Content Analysis. Qualitative Health Research. 15 (9),1277-1288. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732305276687) 6. Lightfoot, David, (1993), ‘Why UG needs a learning theory: triggering verb movement’ in Jones Charles, Historical Linguistics: Problems and Perspectives, Harlow: Longman, pp, 190-214. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Lightfoot%2C+David%2C+%281993%29%2C+%E2%80%98Why+UG+needs+a+learning+theory%3A+triggering+verb+movement%E2%80%99+in+Jones+Charles%2C+Historical+Linguistics%3A+Problems+and+Perspectives%2C+Harlow%3A+Longman%2C+pp%2C+190%2D214%2E) 7. Macleod, M. (2020). Postverbal Negation and the Lexical Split of not. English Language and Linguistics, 24 (4): 667-685. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1017/s1360674319000170) *Updated 24 October 2026*