affirmative 'd o ' i am working on a construction in a cape town dialect that involves the use of unstressed 'd o ' in affirmative contexts : e . g . ' i did go to the hall yesterday ' . no contrastive pre-supposition is intended ; speakers appear to be simply highlighting a 's alient ' activity ( there are present tense parallels too ) . although this is traditionally believed to be a ' contact ' feature of cape town english , it sounds to me rather like a relic from early modern standard english , reinforced by natural ( second language ) acquisition . the form does occur ( though possibly with different pragmatics ) in child language acquisition ( i have sporadic & unsystematic examples from britain ) ; but is soon weeded out of the grammar . question : does anyone know of any dialect ( any l1 or l2 form of english ; child language , early interlanguage etc . ) that has something similar ? ( i am familiar with early modern standard and earlier forms of 'd o ' ; with affirmative 'd o ' in ireland and the south - west of england - the pragmatics there are different , incidentally : ' habitual ' is not a function associated with the cape town dialect . ) thanks : raj mesthrie dept of linguistics university of cape town raj @ beattie . uct . ac . za