5.2 First-Person Epistemic Parentheticals in PDE 129( 2007 ) argue that there are in fact three types of CTPs. The type discussed
by Thompson – which is the subject of this chapter – consists of “secondary
grammatical CTPs.” These are secondary in usage (not the main point of the
utterance, inherently “non- addressable”) and have “adverbial status”:
One of the consequences of the codifi cation of secondary status is that the CTP loses the
semantic capacity to impose its profi le on the complement clause, whose profi le there-
fore overrides that of the CTP (in the manner described by Thompson ) ... Like adverbs,
adverbial CTP clauses (i.e. CTP clauses involving grammatical CTPs) serve a modify-
ing function in relation to the (complement) clause they are attached to. (2007: 586)
Boye and Harder list fi ve features of these forms: (a) they allow neg- raising;
(b) they have “adverbial distribution” (occur in medial and fi nal position as
well as initial position); (c) they may include tags that address the complement,
not the CTP; (d) they don’t allow adverbials; and (e) they are limited morpho-
syntactically (generally not imperative or past tense) (578– 580).^3
Apart from historical studies of a few individual epistemic parentheticals
(see below, Section 5.3 ), there has been little attention paid to how these forms
develop. This chapter thus undertakes a study of fi rst- person epistemic paren-
theticals in the history of English. Following a discussion of the functions of
these forms in Present- day English ( Section 5.2 ), the chapter starts by exam-
ining the form and function of epistemic parentheticals in Middle English
( Section 5.4 ), when they fi rst become common. In order to understand their
function, the chapter explores the distribution and use of epistemic parentheti-
cals specifi cally in Chaucer’s The Canterbury tales and Troilus and Criseyde
( Section 5.5 ), distinguishing between discourse and narrative functions. The
following Section (5.6 ) is devoted to determining the source of epistemic par-
entheticals in Old English and then tracing their syntactic and semantic devel-
opment. This section concludes with a discussion of their development as a
case either of grammaticalization or of lexicalization.
5.2 First- Person Epistemic Parentheticals in Present- Day English
Studies of individual fi rst- person epistemic parentheticals have pointed to their
functional range and fl exibility, depending on position, prosody, scope, and
co- text. For example, Kaltenböck ( 2010 ), after noting that “the function typi-
cally attributed to parenthetical I think in the literature is that of an epistemic
marker,” provides a detailed study of the form in the International corpus
of English– Great Britain (ICE- GB), identifying four central functions: (a) a
3 This type of CTP contrasts with primary, lexical CTPs (the main point of the utterance and
inherently addressable) and with secondary, lexical CTPs (not the main point of the utterance
and actually but not inherently non- addressable). The latter type consists of full complement-
taking verbs which are the “consequence of momentary discourse pressures that assign second-
ary status to a particular clause” (Boye and Harder 2007 : 586).