Do-support in early New Zealand and Australian English

Abstract

Currently, do-support is obligatory with most lexical verbs in negation and questions. At the end of the 19th century it was still variable, in particular with verbs of the so-called know-group. Research on change in British and American English additionally reveals a marked regional difference in the spread of do-support with the lexical verb have. The current study uses corpus evidence to verify whether the two southern-hemisphere varieties, in the second half of the 19th century, followed the British model or whether there were signs of divergence in this area of grammar. The focus is on negation and variable do-support with the lexical verb have. The general picture is one of parallel development, with only minimal differences between the four varieties.