1736.3 Admittedly in Present- Day English
punctuation. While punctuation is an unreliable criterion for determining par-
enthetical use in earlier periods of English, in which punctuation practices were
not standardized, it can fairly confi dently be used in the modern period. I admit ,
with or without a modal, functions as a parenthetical comment clause 12 per-
cent to 19 percent of the time, with I admit without a modal having the highest
usage in British English. Medial position is most common for all forms and
in both dialects. You admit is rarely parenthetical, only 2 percent in both cor-
pora. This low rate can be quite easily explained: for fairly obvious pragmatic/
politeness reasons, one does not typically tell an addressee what he or she has
admitted. You (modal) admit is a more frequent comment clause (19% in British
English , 7% in American English ), but the overall numbers here are low.
Overall, parenthetical use ranges from a low of 2 percent to a high of 19 per-
cent of all uses. Thus the parenthetical use is decidedly less common than the
performative use.
6.3 Admittedly in Present- Day English
Admittedly functions as a disjunct (or sentence) adverbial in Present- day
English, though unlike most such adverbials, it is not paired with a homonym-
ous adjunct (or manner) adverbial (Greenbaum 1969 : 186). Disjunct adverbials
have a superior role, are relatively peripheral syntactically, and have scope over
the sentence as a whole (Hoye 1997 : 179). Like admit , admittedly is generally
seen as non- factive (Swan 1988b : 42).^6
Table 6.3 Parenthetical you admit/ you (modal) admit in the BYU- BNC and COCA a
BYU- BNC COCAyou admit 1/ 50 ( 2% ) 8/ 337 ( 2% )
Initial Medial Final Initial Medial Final
1 (100%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 4 (50%) 2 (25%) 2 (25%)
you (modal) admit 15/ 79 ( 19% ) 23/ 329 ( 7% )
Initial Medial Final Initial Medial Final
5 (33%) 4 (27%) 6 (40%) 9 (39%) 9 (39%) 5 22%)
a. Data were collected March 20, 2016. The search phrase was [y] you admit [y] ( you admit pre-
ceded and followed by punctuation), with similar search strings for the modal forms. Results were
then manually sorted into initial, medial, and fi nal.
Source: adapted from Laurel J. Brinton, “From performative to concessive disjunct: I/you admit and
admittedly ,” in Merja Kytö, John Scahill, and Harumi Tanabe (eds.), Language change and variation
from Old English to Late Modern English. Bern: Peter Lang, 2010, p. 283; with permission.
6 However, Koktová ( 1986 : 76) classifi es admittedly as “factive attitudinal” (also see note 1).