Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 October 1
| Language desk | ||
|---|---|---|
| < September 30 | << Sep | October | Nov >> | Current desk > |
| Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives |
|---|
| The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages. |
October 1[edit]
Smith did rob the bank[edit]
Why do they add "did" like that in criminal indictments, instead of saying "Smith robbed the bank"? Some archaism? Not sure what it might have derived from. Thanks. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:DDAF (talk) 01:34, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
- It's a little old-fashioned perhaps, but used primarily for emphasis. See Do-support § For emphasis. (The opposite is the case for negation: "Smith robbed not" seems more archaic than "Smith didn't rob".) 85.238.91.38 (talk) 09:59, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
- Do-support is not particularly marked as old-fashioned in many contexts, especially when answering questions or raising a point of contention. The "for emphasis" section explains it. People often feel that emphasis is a redundant linguistic concept, but it is an important aspect of giving shades of meaning and to words and phrases. While "Smith robbed the bank." and "Smith did rob the bank." ostensibly mean the same thing in terms of what a dictionary might say on the matter, in context the second carries a more emphatic sense than the first. And that is an important distinction. --Jayron32 11:51, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
- Indictments are drawn up by prosecutors in an arcane, stilted language. This use may have originated ages ago. Tradition may have more to do with it than current functionality. --Lambiam 11:53, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
- I read this as emphasis in the context of the principle of presumption of innocence, since an indictment implicitly always expresses "while the suspect is presumed innocent, we have sufficient evidence to allege that the suspect did rob the bank...". –Austronesier (talk) 13:55, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
- I second Austronesier's interpretation. --Khajidha (talk) 14:09, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
- The context, of course, is that where people are arguing over whether Smith robbed the bank or not, someone with special knowledge of the facts may well say "Smith did rob the bank" (and explain how they know). 95.148.1.191 (talk) 14:56, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
- That was my point, yes. --Jayron32 15:38, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
- The way I read these texts, my intuition is more that it has little to do with emphasis but is really just an archaism. The normal emphatic type of do support would presuppose that there is some contextually given contradiction ("Smith denies robbing the bank, but in fact he did rob the bank"). But in these indictment texts, no such counter-position is expressed anywhere. The sentence in question occurs in a simple narrative stating the facts. ("The jurors for the State [...] present, That X, late of the county of Brunswick, on the 20th day of July, 1911, with force and arms, at and in the county aforesaid, unlawfully, willfully, and feloniously did assault, beat, and wound one Y"). This kind of non-emphatic "do" support was still quite common in 17th century English and seems to have been preserved since then in this special register as a structural idiom. Maybe one factor in preserving it was that it allows the writer to state the verb phrase naming the offense in its most basic (infinitive) form, the same form it would occur in the law, without having to inflect it in the past tense? Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:53, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
- And of course, using the infinitive makes the wording less cumbersome - from "did" to the end of the sentence is 26 letters, while the alternative "assaulted, beat, and wounded one Y" is 27. Had "beat" not been a strong verb it would have been more. This also crops up in the civil law [1], [2]. 95.148.1.191 (talk) 17:09, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
- The way I read these texts, my intuition is more that it has little to do with emphasis but is really just an archaism. The normal emphatic type of do support would presuppose that there is some contextually given contradiction ("Smith denies robbing the bank, but in fact he did rob the bank"). But in these indictment texts, no such counter-position is expressed anywhere. The sentence in question occurs in a simple narrative stating the facts. ("The jurors for the State [...] present, That X, late of the county of Brunswick, on the 20th day of July, 1911, with force and arms, at and in the county aforesaid, unlawfully, willfully, and feloniously did assault, beat, and wound one Y"). This kind of non-emphatic "do" support was still quite common in 17th century English and seems to have been preserved since then in this special register as a structural idiom. Maybe one factor in preserving it was that it allows the writer to state the verb phrase naming the offense in its most basic (infinitive) form, the same form it would occur in the law, without having to inflect it in the past tense? Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:53, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
- That was my point, yes. --Jayron32 15:38, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
- The context, of course, is that where people are arguing over whether Smith robbed the bank or not, someone with special knowledge of the facts may well say "Smith did rob the bank" (and explain how they know). 95.148.1.191 (talk) 14:56, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
- Indictments are drawn up by prosecutors in an arcane, stilted language. This use may have originated ages ago. Tradition may have more to do with it than current functionality. --Lambiam 11:53, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
- Do-support is not particularly marked as old-fashioned in many contexts, especially when answering questions or raising a point of contention. The "for emphasis" section explains it. People often feel that emphasis is a redundant linguistic concept, but it is an important aspect of giving shades of meaning and to words and phrases. While "Smith robbed the bank." and "Smith did rob the bank." ostensibly mean the same thing in terms of what a dictionary might say on the matter, in context the second carries a more emphatic sense than the first. And that is an important distinction. --Jayron32 11:51, 1 October 2020 (UTC)