This critical summary has been drawn up after having analyzed the paper ‘English

‘emphatic do’’ by Chris Wilder (2012).

The paper surveys the phenomenon of ‘emphatic do’, analyzing the two types and how
they differ from each other. Emphatic do is prosodically prominent or focused and can
be found in two different patterns: The VF-sentences, studied by Höhle, (1992); and the
CT-sentences, corresponding to Büring (2003). These two patterns have distinct
intonational and pragmatic properties and different grammatical distributions.

The author presents the main evidence that differs the two types (VF and CT),
accounting for the focus accent placement and the differing syntactic distributions. For
this purpose, based on other authors, Wilder gives some examples that show the
differences and similarities of both patterns. The paper is divided into 7 sections and a
final section (8) with the conclusions drawn after having analyzed all the differences.

The author begins to argue his study by positioning what the emphatic do refers to and
where its use is possible, i.e., in what kind of sentences it can be found. This type of
‘do’ is called 'emphatic' because it communicates an emphatic assertion. Following the
model of the syntax of English clauses, it has been found that do is not possible where
Affix Hopping (AH) is available. Basing his study in Jackendoff (1972), Selkrirk
(1996), and Schwarzschild (1999), the emphatic do signals polarity focus, which is
incompatible with AH-sentences. After some research, the author claims that 'emphatic
do' is always accented, and is always pronounced as strong forms.

The next section studies the main differences between VF-sentences and CT-sentences.
Reference is first made to the accentuation of both: The verum focus, called by the
author as VF sentences, where the finite auxiliary is accented, but no other word, and
CT sentences in which other words are accented (fall-rise intonational contour) in
addition to emphatic ‘do’ (simple fall), although in both patterns the accent on do
realizes a falling tone (\). According to Pierrehumbert and Hirschberg (1990:296), the
contrastive topic accent analyzed by Büring (2003), is known as L+H*LH% sequence
(raising pitch accent followed by a low phrasal tone and a high boundary tone, which is
lower than the preceding H).

In terms of implicatures, the author argues that this pattern generally accompanies do in
CT sentences but not the VF pattern.
In section number 4 of the article, the author emphasizes the VF pattern. This term was
first applied by Höhle (1992) to describe the effect of a narrow focus on the finite verb
in verb-second or verb-initial clauses in German. After some research, the use of the
emphatic do is very similar to this theory. For this purpose, the author bases his analysis
on two aspects: Firstly, the emphatic do signals polarity focus, and secondly, VF
sentences impose requirements on the context of discourse. The first idea means that a
simple binary contrast in semantic is involved, i.e., the proposition of the do-clause is
contrasted with its negation. A do-clause match in tense, mood, and polarity with its
antecedent clause.

Wilder mentions Schwarzschild’s (1999) theory that F-marking does not necessarily
indicate ‘discourse newness’ but signals that this constituent is discourse-old. This
presupposes that a constituent that is not F-marked is Given and to avoid F, the F-mark
must be as little as possible, i.e., only a focused word must be F-marked, not all other
constituents. Schwarzschild proposed the Existential F-closure which states that focused
constituents can account as Given since they are essential of determining Givenness.
They author also accounts for the existential type-shifting by Schwarzschild, which
enables Givenness to be calculated.

Despite being argued that VF sentences have a sole focus, the author presents some
examples in which there is a second accent, that is, words that marks a separate focused
constituents as determined by their relation to the antecedent utterance. After this
evaluation, the author gives examples that differ VF patter with second focus with the
CT pattern. The main difference is that CT do sentences do not occur in some embedded
environments, such as interrogative and factive complements, it-clefts, restrictive
relatives, and adverbial clauses). To show this, the author gives several examples of
each embedded clause. However, some data confirms that VF sentences with a second
focus behave as VF sentences with a sole focus as they can occur in embedded
environments.

In section 5 the author analyzes the CT pattern, especially of its form (fall-rise accent
H*LH%) and its meaning (implicatures concerning unanswered questions). Then the
author mentions Büring's idea of D-trees and implicatures. Büring accounted for the
meaning of the CT accent as discourse trees (D-trees), which refers to a sequence of
issues, for instance, the QUD (Questions under Discussion), and these, in turn, are
divided in a set of Subquestions (SQs). CT 'implicates' and does not answer directly, so
the implicature is called ‘questions unanswered’. The meaning of CT is to presuppose a
strategy in the sentence that contains a CT marking, which in turn implies a constituent
of the D-tree that represents discourse simpler than F-marking does. There are two CT-
markings in different utterances of the same sentence: CT-marked subject, in which the
QUD is partitioned according to people; and CT-marked object, in which the QUD is
partitioned with the object. After presenting some examples, the author believes what
was predicted by Büring: ‘Sentences containing CT accents which directly answer
WHQs do not allow the use of emphatic ‘do’.

Section 6 is about the restrictions on the distribution of CT sentences. According to the

author, CT-do is the main clause phenomenon and as in contrast to the VF pattern, does
not permit this use in (1) wh-questions and (2) declaratives with object preposing.

Concerning the embedded clauses, the author suggests that CT accents do not occur in
embedded environments and are also impossible on the subject of factive complements.
After some studies, the author expects that 'an emphatic do-sentence with CT must form
a complete and a direct answer to the polar question which dominates it in the D-tree.’
This hypothesis suggests that CT sentences must answer a polar question, whereas VF
sentences must not.

In the last section (7) before the conclusion, the author argues the following hypothesis:
An emphatic do-sentence containing a CT-marked constituent is directly dominated by
a polar question in the strategy which the CT elicits. However, this hypothesis does not
explain that the emphatic do appear in CT-marked subject, in CT-marked object, and
CT-marked VP, because of two reasons: (a) Neither do nor any other Focus is required
in CT sentences of type CT-marked subject and CT-marked VP, and (b) normal Yes-
answers to explicit neutral polar questions do not contain emphatic do.

All in all, the main goal of the paper is to establish the existence of two types of
emphatic do. What makes this article most interesting is the fact that we have used
many times this emphatic do without really knowing what we referred to. The fact that
the author gives numerous examples on this analysis helps much more to the
understanding of this phenomenon.