Movement Operations: Do- Auxiliary and ESL learners' usage

The paper explicates the auxiliary 'do' according to theviews of some renowned proponents of generativegrammar by way of definition and uses and adopts Chomsky's Standard Theory Model, which discusses 'do'in terms of deep and surface structures in tree diagrams.The study hazards the generalization that subject/auxiliary inversion and 'do' insertion are alien to some of the first languages of ESL learners on the Plateau due to the disparity in the syntactic realization of polar questions and negative sentences. The study also brings to the fore the connection that does exist between simple declarative sentences, emphatic expressions, negative sentences, and yes/no questions with 'do' support that many secondary school English texts in Nigeria failed to address, which informed, among other factors, ESL learners' wrong usage. Also, the paper illuminates how ESL learners may properly internalize rules via subject/verb agreement for correct usage of 'do' support in emphases, negative sentences, and polar questions.