The Fossilized Question: Grammaticalization of Verbs
When you ask, "Do you speak English?", what is the word 'do' really doing? This seemingly simple word is actually a linguistic fossil, the ghost of a once-mighty action verb.…
Tag: grammaticalization
The Hidden Verb in the Romance Future Tense
Did you know the future tense in languages like French and Spanish is a linguistic fossil? It didn't evolve from the Latin future but from a common phrase meaning "I…