136 Epistemic Parentheticals
fossilizes in the fi rst person and present tense by about 1500 and is used to
express epistemic or evidential meaning. It is fairly common in Early Modern
English and remains as an archaism until into the nineteenth century. In its
fossilized form it does not allow modifi ers or negation, and as its verbal ori-
gins are obscured, it is frequently written as one word, methinks. It can be
understood as undergoing “adverbialization,” i.e., it becomes a unifi ed particle,
functions as a disjunct , and can appear in medial and fi nal as well as initial
position. Concurrently, other forms of the impersonal verb begin to die out,
disappearing from the language by about 1800. Personal constructions (e.g., I
think ) or forms with a dummy it subject ( it seems ) replace the impersonal. As
methinks declines, the personal I think , which was formerly used to express the
meanings ‘cogitate, have something in mind, consider something’ comes more
and more to express the meaning ‘be of the opinion, believe,’ i.e., to function
as an epistemic/ evidential marker.
More recently, López- Couso and Méndez- Naya ( 2014c ) have examined
epistemic parentheticals with the impersonal verbs think ‘seem, appear’ and
seem. They identify two major types of parentheticals: “bare” parentheticals
and adverbial parentheticals with so/ as (both with or without the experiencer
and the dummy subject it ). Adverbial parentheticals with think occur in Old
English and bare parentheticals in Middle English. Adverbial parentheticals
with seem are later, fi rst appearing in the mid fourteenth century, with the less
common bare parenthetical me seems appearing in the mid fi fteenth century
and it seems in the mid seventeenth century. Continuing the study of seem par-
entheticals into Late Modern English in the ARCHER corpus, López- Couso
and Méndez- Naya ( 2014a ) observe that bare parentheticals have now become
the norm. They are more frequent and more grammaticalized than adverbial
parentheticals, which can be past tense, modally marked, and modifi ed by
adverbials.
López- Couso and Méndez- Naya ( 2014b ) examine a set of much more recent
epistemic parentheticals built on the verbs appear/ look/ seem/ sound. In addi-
tion to the bare and adverbial types identifi ed above, they are interested in two
further types which incorporate the complementizer, namely:
(it) looks/ sounds/ seems like
(it) looks/ sounds/ seems/ appears like itThese arise in the last quarter of the nineteenth century in American English.
Brinton ( 2008 : 228– 230, 235– 237) explores the rise of I gather and I fi nd.
In Middle English, I gather is consistently a main verb with an NP comple-
ment. The earliest parenthetical use of adverbial as I gather appears in the
late sixteenth century, while the earliest “bare” parenthetical is not found until
the late nineteenth century. Like I gather , I fi nd is typically complemented by
an NP in Middle English, though parenthetical I fi nd and as I fi nd both occur