Plotkin also analyzed three major changes in the English language: the “ed” ending in past-tense verbs, the adoption of the word “do” as an auxiliary verb (“you say not” became “you do not say”), the evolution of negation (from the Old English “ic ne secge” to the Middle English “I ne seye not” to the Early Middle English “I say not”).
Plotkin also analyzed three major changes in the English language: the “ed” ending in past-tense verbs, the adoption of the word “do” as an auxiliary verb (“you say not” became “you do not say”), the evolution of negation (from the Old English “ic ne secge” to the Middle English “I ne seye not” to the Early Middle English “I say not”). He determined that selection was likely why negative sentence structures changed, but the other two were likely the results of random linguistic drift, which, examined up close, is actually a series of fits and starts that looks like gradual change from a distance.