DOPV Pro-verb DO
Definition
DO used as a pro-verb, standing in for a lexical verb (e.g., “She works harder than he does”). Excludes DO as auxiliary in questions, negation, or emphatic constructions.
Detection Rules
pybiber
DO with lemma “do” whose dependency role is NOT auxiliary. Captures pro-verb use where DO substitutes for a lexical verb.
cql[lemma="do" & dep!="aux"]
Normalization
Per finite_verbs
Examples
She works harder than he does.
I never used to like it, but now I do.
They said they would help, and they did.
Sources
- biber_1988 — Biber, Douglas (1988) : Variation across Speech and Writing
- pybiber — Brown, David West & Reinhart, Alex (2026) : pybiber — Python package for linguistic feature extraction and Multi-Dimensional Analysis
- xiao_2009 — Xiao, Richard (2009) : Multidimensional analysis and the study of world Englishes
Notes
Biber’s f_12 and Xiao’s B22 count pro-verb DO (DO standing in for a lexical verb). pybiber implements this as lemma=“do” & dep!=aux. See DOAUX for the complementary MFTE feature counting DO as auxiliary.