Parenthetical reporting clauses in the history of English: the development of quotative inversion

Abstract

This study is a corpus-based diachronic analysis of English reporting parentheticals, i.e. clauses introducing direct speech, placed after or in the middle of the reported message. The aim of the investigation is to trace the development of the construction throughout the history of English, establishing the main factors influencing the choice between VS and SV patterns (i.e. with and without quotative inversion respectively), showing how various reporting verbs were increasingly attracted to the construction, and demonstrating the gradual morphological reduction of the main reporting verbs: quoth and say. The study is based on syntactically annotated corpora of Old, Middle, Early Modern and Late Modern English, and uses other corpora to illustrate more recent changes. The study reveals that reporting clauses do not show regular quotative inversion with all subject types until the Early Modern English period and links this development to the emergence of the comment clause with say. It is also claimed that quotative inversion is not directly derived from the V-2 rule and that parenthetical reporting clauses have functioned as a separate construction since the Old English period.

Treebanks in Historical Syntax

“…With some treebanks (or series of treebanks) now providing data that cover time spans of many centuries, it is possible to get a long view of some changes. For example, for English, for which data are available from the eighth century to the present day, Cichosz (2018) is able to investigate parenthetical reporting clauses (e.g., said he) across the whole period, and Taylor & Pintzuk (2017Pintzuk ( , 2018 study the history of split coordination (e.g., The king came and his knights). In both cases, the long view makes it possible to disentangle potentially ambiguous surface strings by tracing their differing diachronic developments.…”

Three Types of Old English Adjectival Postposition: A Corpus-Based Construction Grammar Approach

“…This usage-based approach allows for detecting subtleties and nuances that other models may inadvertently overlook. In studies in OE syntax, Cichosz (2019:210), adopting a detailed constructional analysis, has shown “that clauses with quotative inversion, regardless of some superficial similarity and a partial structural overlap, pattern neither with clauses following the V-2 rule nor with V-1 declaratives” and confirmed that “such clauses should not be included in studies of the V-2 rule.” Therefore, the study proved that even formally similar patterns may be interpreted—on grounds of their different functions—as constructions sanctioned by different nodes in a constructional network.…”

Disgusting, obscene and aggravating language: speech descriptors and the sociopragmatic evaluation of speech in theOld Bailey Corpus

“…Speech reporting verbs (such as SAY, ANSWER, RETORT) show a variety of developmental trends: while some verbs more or less disappear over time (such as QUEÞAN/QUETHEN, most commonly found in the forms quoth and quod), the overall number increases across the history of English, new members being added especially in the Early and Late Modern English periods, including the quotative BE like (e.g. D'Arcy 2017 ;Cichosz 2019;Walker & Grund 2020a). Throughout the history of English, redeploying speech has frequently (always?)…”