Discourse organization and the rise of final then in the history of English

Haselow, Alexander

doi:10.1075/cilt.325.07has

Cited by 37 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…This distinguishes them from epistemic adverbs. Haselow (2011Haselow ( , 2012 argues that utterance-final then in questions in present-day spoken English has many of the properties identified here for discourse particles in Old English (purportedly acquired since late Middle English), even though their position is essentially different. We will come back to this in section 4.…”

Section: Old English Particlesmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…Clearly, clause-final then is in a very different position from that of þonne in Old English and Middle English. Haselow (2012) makes a case that the origin of final then is in Middle English, and originates from the optional conjunct then in if…then… constructions in which the conditional protasis is not expressed in a subordinated if-clause, but is implied in a preceding utterance. Two examples that make the condition explicit are given in (29), from The Parsed Corpus of early Modern English (PPCEME, Kroch et al 2004): (29) a.…”

Section: Middle English and Beyondmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(deloney-e2-h) but if I finde meanes to make you a Lady, what wilt thou say then? Haselow (2012) makes a case that final then originated over the ME period in the spoken language. It may be noted that it is hardly attested at all in PPCME2, which covers the period from 1150 to 1500, and sparsely in PPCEME, from 1500 to 1720.…”

Section: Middle English and Beyondmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Discourse particles in early English: Clause structure, pragmatics and discourse management

Kemenade

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2020

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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This article presents a case study on the shifting interaction between clause structure, information structure and discourse organisation in the history of English, as evidenced by the development from Old to Middle English of what we will call discourse particles: discourse-cohesive devices grammaticalised from adverbs. These include the Old English elements þa, þonne, nu, when used in a clause-internal position.We will show that these discourse particles have the following properties: 1) pragmatically: they express the response of the speaker to the context/common ground shared by speaker and hearer, and thus play a pivotal role in common ground management; 2) relation to clause type: the pragmatic meanings of discourse particles are co-determined by the illocutionary force of the clause types in which they occur, including main clause questions, imperatives, hwaet exclamatives, and correlative subclauses; 3) syntactically and information structurally: discourse particles occur in a fixed position in the clause that separates discourse-given from discourse-new information. Discourse particles thus form a subtle lynchpin between pragmatics, discourse management and clause structure.Some particles were lost in the transition to Middle English, but then and now continued to be attested in questions and imperatives, in the same clause-internal position as in OE. Towards the end of the ME period, we see a positional shift to clause-final position, though maintaining the discourse linking character of the particle. This change is due to a syntactic change tightening the use of strict SVO word order and narrowing the use of clause-medial material.

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Section: Old English Particlesmentioning

confidence: 83%

Section: Middle English and Beyondmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Discourse particles in early English: Clause structure, pragmatics and discourse management

Kemenade

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2020

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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“…Some of these particles are relatively recent phenomena, such as final even, and are therefore less frequently attested in corpora than those in use for centuries, such as final then (see Haselow 2012). In spite of the different types of rhetorical relation they establish between two units of discourse, they all share a similar history: they gravitated towards the end of an utterance and became positionally fixed; they gave up the properties of the word class of the source lexeme and cannot occur as an independent utterance; they lost their propositional content and exhibit a very loose relation to the syntactic unit they accompany.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…. constructions > final particle) (Haselow 2012), and final though (adverb/conjunction > final particle) (Lenker 2010: 185-189). We can thus postulate two different pathways for the development of final particles, shown in (36).…”

Section: Final Particles As An Instance Of Grammaticalization In Discmentioning

confidence: 99%

Arguing for a wide conception of grammar: The case of final particles in spoken discourse

Haselow

2013

Folia Linguistica

Self Cite

147

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The grammatical status of final particles in spoken English, such as then, though, anyway, and but, is undefined, as the various labels used in the literature (e.g. connectors, linking adverbials, conjuncts) show. This indeterminacy derives from the functional diversity of these particles. They not only link units of (spoken) discourse, but may also create a link between a discourse unit and an implied proposition; they are used to express subjective meanings and to modify illocutionary force. As such particles represent a borderline case between grammar and pragmatics, they invite discussion of the usefulness of a strict grammar-pragmatics divide and suggest a conception of grammar that goes beyond the level of "well-formed" sentences. A distinction will be made between "microgrammar", which refers to sentence-internal strucural relations, and "macrogrammar", referring to structural relations beyond isolated sentences. Final particles are analyzed as grammatical elements on the macrogrammatical level.

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Conjuncts in nineteenth-century English: diachronic development and genre diversity

Grund¹,

Smitterberg²

2014

English Language and Linguistics

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This article explores the use of connective adverbials or CONJUNCTS (e.g. therefore, on the other hand, firstly) in nineteenth-century English. Drawing on A Corpus of Nineteenth-Century English (CONCE), the study focuses on charting change over time and variation among different genres, and considers the distribution of various semantic types (e.g. contrastive, resultive) as well as individual conjuncts and author styles. We show that nineteenth-century English displays considerable genre differentiation in the use of conjuncts, both in terms of frequency and semantic types of conjuncts employed.Within these larger trends, patterns are also evident for individual conjuncts (e.g. now, therefore, so) and individual authors (e.g. in Letters). Science writing, in particular, reveals a drastic increase in conjuncts (in nearly all semantic types), which sets it apart from other genres. This suggests that the conjunct-heavy style of academic writing that has been attested in studies of Present-Day English was established in the nineteenth century. On a more general level, this result underlines the importance of considering formal genres when charting language change, as they may be in the forefront of the formation of new linguistic patterns that are unique to written texts. The article also contributes to our growing understanding of Late Modern English syntax.

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Discourse organization and the rise of final then in the history of English

Cited by 37 publications

References 0 publications

Discourse particles in early English: Clause structure, pragmatics and discourse management

Discourse particles in early English: Clause structure, pragmatics and discourse management

Arguing for a wide conception of grammar: The case of final particles in spoken discourse

Conjuncts in nineteenth-century English: diachronic development and genre diversity

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