217b. and, as I was just saying to your secretary, you have served the party like
a patriot, (1858 Coulburn, The life and adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman
Potter [COHA])
The meaning of this expression is typically literal, though it may also have
pragmatic functions, as an emphasizer, as a means of returning to the topic of
the discourse (after an interruption), and as a procedural guidepost to the reader.
However, the typical tense of this adverbial clause (present), the absence of the
adverbial, and its differing pragmatic function make it an unlikely source for
I’m just saying.
The third possible origin is in the phrase I am saying without an adver-
bial ( just , only ). Standard historical corpora provide a number of examples, as
shown in Table 7.5. Typically, I’m saying is not parenthetical but occurs in the
clause what I’m saying.
Of the forms functioning as comment clauses in CLMET3.0, all but two
are from the Irish playwright Edmund John Millington Synge; all nineteen
examples in ED are from this same playwright. Of the twenty- four examples
in COHA, twelve are from the play Anna Christie , by Eugene O’Neill, an
American son of an Irish immigrant actor. In CEN, four are from works by
Ralph Connor, a Canadian born in Glengarry County, Ontario and one is from
a work by Hall Caine, a Manx writer. Thus, it seems clear that this is an Irish
feature.^26 Furthermore, the function is rather different, as it seems to occur with
a warning or a command:
(32) a. BURKE – Warningly. Now don’t be coming at me again , I ’ m saying, or I’ll
fl atten you on the fl oor with a blow (1922 O’Neill, Anna Christie [COHA])
Table 7.5 Frequency of I am/ ’m sayin(g) in a variety of historical corporaCorpus Total examplesExamples functioning
as comment clauses
CEN 52 6
CLMET3.0 48 36
ARCHER 6 0
TIME a 79 0
ED 75 19
OED 13 0
COHA a 1226 24a. Search string: [, I ’m|am saying ,|.|!] (August 14, 2015).7.3 (I’m) Just Saying and Related Comment Clauses[ https:// books.google.ca/ books?id=OxYSAAAAYAAJ ]), thus arguing against Enge’s pro-
posed source (in Liberman 2012 ).
26 Interestingly, a search for I’m saying in the second part of A corpus of Irish English (drama,
novels and varia from1600– present) yields 48 examples, all from plays by Synge, suggesting