1696.2 Admit in Present- Day English
d. The cheap article, I will admit , ministers to a certain grade of intellect (1996
American Heritage [COCA])
(3) a. You had, you admit , good treatment from me (2006 The American Poetry
Review [COCA])
b. Whoever thought of that has, you have to admit , a peculiar sense of humour
(1985– 1994 James, Devices and desires [BYU- BNC])
c. This bombardment of hype, you must admit , is a bit startling (2005 Chicago
Sun- Times [COCA])
d. But it is a curious – you will admit , it is a curious kind of deal going on in
your house? (1993 Ind_ Geraldo [COCA])
This chapter begins with an examination of the distribution and functions of
these forms in Present- day English ( Section 6.2 ), as well as of the related dis-
junct adverbial admittedly ( Section 6.3 ), and proposed synchronic associations
among these forms ( Section 6.4 ). It then turns to an examination of their his-
torical origins. The attested historical evidence for the rise of I/ you (modal)
admit and admittedly ( Section 6.6 ) is used to test the postulated developments
of parenthetical disjuncts and of disjunct adverbials ( Section 6.5 ). In the end,
the traditional views are found to be only partially validated in the case of
admit ( Section 6.7 ).
6.2 Admit in Present- Day English
6.2.1 Performative I Admit
In the fi rst- person present indicative active, I admit meets the criteria for per-
formative use (see Verschueren 1980 : 7– 9). First, it is possible to use admit
performatively in the structure: “I hereby admit + complement.” Second, under
normal circumstances, saying “I (hereby) admit X” is an act of admitting. And
third, it is impossible under normal circumstances to say, “He/ she admitted X
without intending to admit X.” Verschueren includes admit among his list of
performative verbs (1980: 6– 7).
Admit is classifi ed as an “assertive” speech act, one that expresses the
speaker’s strength of conviction in the truth of the proposition (e.g., Fraser
1975 : 190), and it denotes a verbal act (e.g., argue , insist , maintain ) rather
than a mental act (e.g., agree , hope , presume ) (Hooper 1975 ). It belongs to the
“strong” subclass of assertives; for example, it does not allow neg- raising ( I
admit that he did not steal the money ≠ I do not admit he stole the money ) (see
Hooper 1975 : 102– 112).
It has been suggested that admit has an “argumentative” aspect: the speaker
‘allows’ something belonging to the adversary’s position to be true while con-
tradicting some aspect of his or her own position (Leech 1983 : 224). That
is, when a speaker admits that P, P is part of the adversary’s position, and