Chapter 6. Syntactic change and pragmatic maintenance
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Ans M.C. van Kemenade
Abstract
This chapter presents a corpus-based study of the history of then as a discourse marker in English. It will be shown that the pragmatic use of then and its status as a discourse particle was more or less stable throughout the history of English, even though its syntax changed profoundly.
The precursor of then in Old English occurs on a large scale in a fixed position in questions, imperatives and conditional correlatives, and is presuppositional in the sense that it reflects a speaker’s response to the context, such as surprise or disapproval in questions, reinforcement or downtoning of the directive in imperatives.
From early Middle English onward, the pragmatic use of then in questions and imperatives occurs in available alternative positions in the clause: initially (in yes/no questions and imperatives) and final (in questions). The older particle position became restricted to questions. The finally position was extended to declarative SVO clauses.
The division of labour between particle use and temporal adverb use will be shown to interact, over the late Middle English and early Modern periods, with major syntactic changes that affected each of the clause types in different ways: the loss of V2, the auxiliation of the modals and the rise of do-support, and the loss of V to T movement. Through these developments, the pragmatic use of then has, if anything, expanded. This suggests that its robust discourse function was a powerful drive for maintenance under syntactic change.
Abstract
This chapter presents a corpus-based study of the history of then as a discourse marker in English. It will be shown that the pragmatic use of then and its status as a discourse particle was more or less stable throughout the history of English, even though its syntax changed profoundly.
The precursor of then in Old English occurs on a large scale in a fixed position in questions, imperatives and conditional correlatives, and is presuppositional in the sense that it reflects a speaker’s response to the context, such as surprise or disapproval in questions, reinforcement or downtoning of the directive in imperatives.
From early Middle English onward, the pragmatic use of then in questions and imperatives occurs in available alternative positions in the clause: initially (in yes/no questions and imperatives) and final (in questions). The older particle position became restricted to questions. The finally position was extended to declarative SVO clauses.
The division of labour between particle use and temporal adverb use will be shown to interact, over the late Middle English and early Modern periods, with major syntactic changes that affected each of the clause types in different ways: the loss of V2, the auxiliation of the modals and the rise of do-support, and the loss of V to T movement. Through these developments, the pragmatic use of then has, if anything, expanded. This suggests that its robust discourse function was a powerful drive for maintenance under syntactic change.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Chapter 1. Particles 1
- Chapter 2. From up-toning intensifying particle to scalar focus particle 25
- Chapter 3. Do intensifiers lose their expressive force over time? 69
- Chapter 4. The interpretation of the German additive particle auch (‘too, also’) in quantificational contexts 95
- Chapter 5. The German modal particle ja and selected English lexical correlates in the Europarl corpus 117
- Chapter 6. Syntactic change and pragmatic maintenance 147
- Chapter 7. Final though 177
- Chapter 8. A comparative study of German auch and Italian anche 209
- Chapter 9. Scalarity as a meaning atom in wohl -type particles 243
- Chapter 10. Modal particles in questions and wh -sensitivity 269
- Chapter 11. PP-internal particles in Dutch as evidence for PP-internal discourse structure 297
- Chapter 12. Mandarin exhaustive focus shì and the syntax of discourse congruence 323
- Chapter 13. Evidentiality and the QUD 355
- Index 381
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Chapter 1. Particles 1
- Chapter 2. From up-toning intensifying particle to scalar focus particle 25
- Chapter 3. Do intensifiers lose their expressive force over time? 69
- Chapter 4. The interpretation of the German additive particle auch (‘too, also’) in quantificational contexts 95
- Chapter 5. The German modal particle ja and selected English lexical correlates in the Europarl corpus 117
- Chapter 6. Syntactic change and pragmatic maintenance 147
- Chapter 7. Final though 177
- Chapter 8. A comparative study of German auch and Italian anche 209
- Chapter 9. Scalarity as a meaning atom in wohl -type particles 243
- Chapter 10. Modal particles in questions and wh -sensitivity 269
- Chapter 11. PP-internal particles in Dutch as evidence for PP-internal discourse structure 297
- Chapter 12. Mandarin exhaustive focus shì and the syntax of discourse congruence 323
- Chapter 13. Evidentiality and the QUD 355
- Index 381
