The Evolution of Pragmatic Markers in English Pathways of Change

146 Epistemic Parentheticals I have ignored some initial and fi nal adverbials (such as why or thus ) or inter- jections (such a ...

5.5 First-Person Epistemic Parentheticals in Chaucer 147 The most frequent position for fi rst- person epistemic parentheticals ...

148 Epistemic Parentheticals Second, they occur with statements of more general opinion or truth, often with expressions with ge ...

5.5 First-Person Epistemic Parentheticals in Chaucer 149 ‘I am so used to blowing in the fi re that it has changed my complexion ...

150 Epistemic Parentheticals First, they occur in metacomments (cf. Boggel 2009) concerning the telling of the tale: (15) a. Now ...

5.5 First-Person Epistemic Parentheticals in Chaucer 151 the Prioress’s forehead and quality of her cloak (19a) or his calculati ...

152 Epistemic Parentheticals We see, therefore, that the use of fi rst- person epistemic parentheticals in internal discourse, i ...

5.6 Development 153 5.6 Development of First- Person Epistemic Parentheticals In order to understand the rise of fi rst- person ...

154 Epistemic Parentheticals hardly ever expressed adverbially in OE and ME” (221– 222). In addition to truth intensifi ers ( so ...

5.6 Development 155 Goossens ( 1982 ) sees ic wene þæt as expressing ‘possibility’ and serving as a “(potential) performative ma ...

156 Epistemic Parentheticals to use this verb as a simple introductory expression like the Modern English ‘you know ’.”^23 Moreo ...

5.6 Development 157 Keeping the Old English situation in mind, in the sections that follow I will con- sider both syntactic and ...

158 Epistemic Parentheticals b. For wel I woot Ø thy pacience is gon. (1387– 1400 Chaucer, CT D.WB 839) ‘For well I know your pa ...

5.6 Development 159 impersonal verb occurs with no oblique pronoun (indicated by Ø), either par- enthetically or followed by a c ...

160 Epistemic Parentheticals As we saw above, in Old English we fi nd adverbial clauses with fi rst- person know - verbs introdu ...

5.6 Development 161 Unlike the matrix clause hypothesis , this proposal does not involve a rever- sal of syntactic hierarchy (ma ...

162 Epistemic Parentheticals Fischer ( 2007a :  105, 2007b :  304)  provides an alternative scenario for the development of epis ...

5.6 Development 163 development” and suggests that it would be fruitful “to investigate the extent to which [epistemics] interse ...

164 Epistemic Parentheticals been a meaning shift in which the invited inference of uncertainty stemming from the mental mode of ...

5.6 Development 165 More recently, López- Couso and Méndez- Naya ( 2014b ) have argued for the grammaticalization of parenthetic ...