• hakase@lemm.ee
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    28 days ago

    This is common in British English.

    For example, the question “Are you going into town?” might be answered by an American with, “I might,” and by a Brit with “I might do”. In past tense it would be “I might have” vs. “I might have done”.

    This is all perfectly systematic and grammatical - this person just has a different grammar than you do. Though I guess that’s what Nazis do best: enforcing arbitrary standards in systems they don’t understand to destroy diversity to everyone’s detriment.

    • jpeps@lemmy.world
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      28 days ago

      Could you give some more examples of this? Because I don’t think I agree that it’s even technically correct, though I don’t have a proper argument as for why. I feel like this is more likely a non-native speaker picking up on a structure like “does your X do Y?” and repurposing it incorrectly.

        • jpeps@lemmy.world
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          28 days ago

          Thanks so much for these, I really enjoyed reading them. I’m not sure it’s the same thing though to be honest. I feel like in this example, ‘does’ is where ‘do’ would go. Eg ‘do your family members? Do your staff? Does your partner?’ In your links I think the closest examples are those saying that they need to add a word after ‘do’ to clarify what kind of ‘do’ it is, eg something like ‘Does your medical clinic do that?’

          • hakase@lemm.ee
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            28 days ago

            It’s definitely the same thing. We can test this using other modals and auxiliaries in equivalent question constructions to show that we’re dealing with analogous structures:

            If making a question with “might”, for example (with the pro-predicate base sentence “But your medical clinic might do”), we get “But might your medical clinic do?”

            With “would”, “But would your medical clinic do?”

            So, with “dummy do”/do-support leading to the insertion of “do” for inversion purposes, along with the separate pro-predicate “do” lower in the clause, “Your medical clinic does” (or possibly “Your medical clinic does do”) becomes in the same way “Does your medical clinic do?”

    • TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee
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      28 days ago

      Wow that’s standard? It was the most awkward thing I’ve read all day. I feel bad for you guys out there…