16 Pragmatic Markers: Synchronic and Diachronic
Chapter 3 examines the development of the clause- internal adverbial hwilum
‘at times’ modifying an iterative or habitual event (6a) to a sentential adverb
meaning ‘formerly’ (6b) to a pragmatic marker meaning ‘once upon a time,’
which serves to introduce an episode (6c):
(6) a. clause- internal adverb : Scop hwilum sang hador on Heorote (Beo 496)
‘a scop sometimes sang clearly at Heorot’
b. sentential adverb : ʒ ider com in gangan hwilon an meretrix (1100 History of
the holy rood- tree 26, ll. 11– 12 [ Helsinki corpus of English texts (HC)])
‘formerly a prostitute came walking in thither’
c. pragmatic marker : Men caldit Kaer- legion ... Whylon Romayns had þis
lond In þer demeynes (a1450(a1338) Mannyng, Chron.Pt.1 (Lamb 131) 3571
[ Middle English dictionary (MED)])
‘Men called it Kaer- legion ... Once upon a time, the Romans had this land in
their domain’
Other pragmatic markers which conform to Traugott’s ( 1995a ) proposed
direction of change include Early Modern English (EModE) anon , a marker
of saliency/ importance/ sequence, developing from an adverb meaning ‘at
once, immediately’ in Middle English (see Brinton 1996 : Ch. 4), OE witod-
lice and soðlice , which serve as highlighters and markers of discourse dis-
continuity developing from adverbs meaning ‘certainly, truly’ (see Lenker
2000 ), and ME well , fi rst functioning as a textual “frame maker” introduc-
ing reported speech or denoting the speaker’s acceptance of the situation,
and then expanding into interpersonal functions as a face- threat mitigator
( Jucker 1997 ).
Not all single words follow one of these adverbial pathways. Méndez-
Naya ( 2006 ), for example, shows that the pragmatic marker right , which
arose at the end of the EModE period, is more likely to have developed from
the adjectival use (as in you are right , that’s right ) than from the adjunct
adverbial function (as in you say/ think/ deem right ) (cf. Finell 1989 on the
origin of well ).
1.4.1.2 From Clausal Construction to Pragmatic Marker: Main-
Clause- Like Comment Clauses. Pragmatic markers that are “main clause- like”
( Kaltenböck 2007 : 29) or type (i) “comment clauses ” ( Quirk et al. 1985 : 1112–
1115), i.e., like a matrix clause otherwise requiring a that - complement, such as
I think / believe/ guess , etc., it seems/ appears , etc., you know / see , have been seen
as developing via what I have termed the “matrix clause hypothesis” (Brinton
2006 : 36). This hypothesis is based on the infl uential article by Thompson and
Mulac ( 1991 ), which argues for the synchronic development of the “fi rst- per-
son epistemic parentheticals” I think and I guess based on a corpus of conver-
sational Present- day English.