206 Peter Harder
- Comment clauses and the coding of hedges in English
Even if English does not have a mood distinction for this purpose, it pro-
vides its own way to code the ‘hedged performative’ reading unambig-
uously, i.e. by means of a so-called ‘comment clause’ construction (cf.
Quirk et al. 1985: 1112). This construction involves removing the matrix
clause from its fronted position, putting it at the end or in mid-sentence po-
sition:
(4) John is ill, I am afraid.
(5) John, I am afraid, is ill.
Both possible positions exemplify the interaction of discourse principles
and coding principles. FG provides slots for extraclausal elements both be-
fore and after the clausal positions, and the ‘tail’ position is generally
recognized as a home for what may, iconically, be called ‘afterthoughts’ in
relation to clause content. The clause-internal mid-sentence position is also
used by ‘sentence adverbials’ of various kinds, including modal and attitu-
dinal adverbials. In languages like German or Danish the mid-sentence
position is also the home of particles that code attitudinal status. Such par-
ticles are absent in English, and the similarity between the content of
certain particles in German and Danish and certain types of comment
clauses in English reveals something about the coding pattern of English.
When comment clauses occupy mid-sentence position they are standing at
the beginning of a potential grammaticalization path that has not been fol-
lowed in English: certain Danish particles have historically developed out
of comment-clause-like constructions (cf. Davidsen-Nielsen 1996: 298).
Thus the removal of the matrix clause ‘chunk’ to these positions is one way
of bringing about a more motivated relationship between its interpersonal
status and the way it is linguistically represented.
The representational level needs to contain the matrix clause in order to
capture this relationship. First of all, if we remove I am afraid from the
representational layer, we lose the possibility of explaining what qualifies
represented content of that kind to code a hedge, namely that it is an
indication of sympathy with the addressee’s feelings. Moreover, it follows
from the coding principles above that the content of I am afraid ... achieves
a slightly different status in each case, while its relation to the subact of
‘hedging’ on the interpersonal level is constant. In one case it aligns itself
(roughly speaking) with attitudinal elements in the clause, in another it
aligns itself with extraclausal ‘dislocated’ elements. In spite of the differ-