ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF <i>THE POINT IS </i>AND RELATED ISSUES IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN ENGLISH

Abstract

Nishi and two anonymous EL reviewers for their invaluable comments and constructive criticism and to Karin Aijmer, Joan C. Beal and Wolfgang Imo for their providing relevant information to me. Any remaining faults are all my own.

N-isFocalizers as Semi-fixed Constructions: Modeling Variation across World Englishes

“…The development of a pragmatic function presents an argument in favor of the latter interpretation. That these constructions have developed into DMs, which are, moreover, predominantly used in the left periphery of the sentence, is also evidenced by the different terms that are used for them: they are referred to as "introductory constructions" (Curzan 2012), "overtures" (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad & Finegan 1999), "projector/projecting constructions" (Günthner 2008;Curzan 2012;Shibasaki 2014Shibasaki , 2015, "scope operators" (Fiehler, Barden, Elstermann & Kraft 2004), "stance complement" constructions (Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech & Svartvik 1985), "utterance launchers" (Schmid 2000), or "focus formulas (with shell nouns)" (Tuggy 1996;Tárnyiková 2018). The term "focalizer" is the one introduced by Aijmer (2007).…”

“…Earlier corpus-based research is often restricted to one shell noun (e.g., Delahunty 2012; Shibasaki 2014, 2015; Keizer 2013, 2016). However, the synchronic data used in Hundt and Oppliger (2022) reveal that individual shell nouns vary significantly with respect to the type of proposition (bare versus that -clause) that they focalize.…”