In Emilia’s song Big Big World, the chorus contains the following line: “…but I do, do feel that I do, do will miss you much”.
Is this grammatically correct usage? Can will, which (as I understand) is an auxiliary verb used to express the future tense, be combined with do as another auxiliary verb in order to intensify its meaning?
Interesting question. I’ve never heard this construction before and, as a native speaker, it sounds ungrammatical to me, but I’d be curious to find out whether this is an occasionally seen archaic or literary usage.
No. That just sounds weird no matter how you parse it. It probably scans though, so most people let go. There are plenty of songs with weird structures that are put together that way to fit the music.
I’m not familiar with this one, and don’t know how it sounds, but probably most people don’t think about it.
There was a song in the 80s that repeated the line “Between you and I.” Scanned well, totally wrong. Drove me nuts, but I couldn’t get anyone else to care.
Then there was that patriotic song that went “I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.” I want to scream “‘An American’ is not a place!” Again, can’t get anyone else to care.
Neil Diamond even once wrote “The song she brang to me,” instead of “brought,” because it rhymed with “the song she sang to me.” This one got a few people besides me riled, but it didn’t ruin his career, as I thought it should have.
So your song belongs to a long tradition of sacrificing grammar for a nice scan. Nobody but you will care.
As an archaic construction, you will find “I do will something to happen,” as in, “I would willingly effect something to happen,” but I don’t think you’d see it followed by a third verb, and I don’t think you’d see it followed by something like “miss you,” which most people wouldn’t want to happen. If she feels she will miss whoever it is, I doubt she’s going to try to effect missing this person (horse, dog, whatever).
I suppose that if she felt she wouldn’t miss him/her, but wanted to, she might try to will it, but that doesn’t sound like where the song is going. Anyway, it’s sort of artless to stick an archaic expression in there for no reason except to scan, when the whole song isn’t written that way. (Assuming it’s not-- I guess I should look up the whole song.)
It was probably correct in a much older version of English. The book Principles of Diachronic Syntax by David Lightfoot describes how, during the period 1550-1600, English reorganized its modals. This involved two major changes:
–Modals ceased being verbs, you could no longer say things like “must can” and the like. So a new grammatical type modal arose replacing modal verbs.
–Periphrastic phrases like “be able to” and “have to” (pronounced “haf to”) arose when you wanted a modal to govern another modalic idea: e.g. “must be
able to”.
So if “do” was used as an intensifier in the early 16th century (I don’t know that it was), “do will” would have been acceptable. Still the periphrasitc substitute “do be about to” really doesn’t sound very good either, I must say. But I don’t think it is grammatically wrong, just odd.
Incidentally, modal sequences like “doit pouvoir” are perfectly acceptable in French and I think analogous phrases in German are too.
Surely, it’s just emphasising the sentiment, i.e., I do, I do (now), and I will (in the future)?
It’s just songwriter’s grammar or poetic licence to use “do, do, will” to echo “do, do feel”.
She is using the word “do” as both a real word and a rhythmic nonsense syllable like “la la” and it doesn’t make sense to try to analyze the grammar. It’s not even wrong.
Sure, and I’m not even sure I’d call that construction archaic. A bit rare and overly formal, maybe. I was, indeed, talking about “do will” with “will” as an auxiliary verb, not as a primary verb.
Unlike in German, modal verbs in English (such as will) are “defective”: they can’t function as a base verb (or like an infinitive), and therefore can’t function with do-support–in standard usage. So it’s ungrammatical, for example, in standard English to ask:Do you will work tomorrow?*There are some dialects of English where they will function in this way with other modals:I might can fix it.*(Instead of: I might be able to fix it.)
The song in the OP doesn’t sound like any dialect I’ve ever heard. It’s probably just poetic license.
Somehow missed it–as Hari Seldon points out, above, and . . .
Art breaks rules. And she hooked you, so her art did it just right. Emilia thanks you for talking about her.
Thanks for the contributions so far. For those of you who don’t know the song (apparently it was not as big a hit in America as it was in Europe), here is a link to the video on YouTube. The first instance of that chorus line is about 24 seconds into the clip.
Sure, I understand that this usage was chosen for the sound and rhythm of it. I’m just wondering whether it is also grammatically correct.
I think this is really the best interpretation.
I think I may be hallucinating.
I could swear I’d learned that song in New Hampshire in 1988, but the Interwebs swears it was written by Emilia. 
Next time I run into my papers from the Camp I’ll have to see if I can find it, cos if I do, someone’s been lyin’… (sadly, those papers and me are about 2000km apart right now).
It was popular in New Hampshire in the late 90s. Well, for certain values of “popular” anyway. Like me, Emilia Rydberg would’ve only been in elementary school in 1988, and as far as I know, she really is the one who wrote it.
That is wrong. With conditionals, you would use the past/passive form, as in “I might could fix it.” I believe I have actually heard “might could” used in that way (in speaking), though by the same people who drop “to be” from passive mode statements, as in “this needs done.”
It definitely sounds like a song that you’ve heard before (maybe even evoking a nursery rhyme kind of thing), but I definitely don’t remember anything in the late 80s that would match it by another artist, either in terms of lyrics or melody. I remember it from '98 and, makes sense, as that’s when I moved to Europe and the song was a huge hit there (but apparently not so in the US.)
You can call it “wrong,” but people say it. Maybe you’ve never heard it yourself, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t said. The data is there–you can read it yourself. (And how is might could fix it passive?)