Irish English Habitual Do Be Revisited

Abstract

This article examines the category of present habitual in Irish English, Irish and Scots Gaelic. The latter two are frequently claimed to have had an influence on the development of the tense and aspect systems of their respective contact varieties of English. It is argued that Scots Gaelic, in contrast to Irish Gaelic, has no separately marked habitual present system, and therefore there may have been less pressure to introduce distinct habitual-present aspect into Scottish English, an assessment which is in line with research in contact linguistics