The Evolution of Pragmatic Markers in English Pathways of Change

5.5 First-Person Epistemic Parentheticals in Chaucer 147

The most frequent position for fi rst- person epistemic parentheticals is clause
medially, as seen in Table 5.2.

5.5.2 Contexts of Occurrence in Discourse and Narration

First- person epistemic parentheticals are distributed in The Canterbury tales
and in Troilus and Criseyde as shown in Table 5.3.
First- person epistemic parentheticals in Chaucer’s discourse, or dialogic,
mode are used in quite different contexts than in his narrative mode. In dis-
course, fi rst- person epistemic parentheticals are generally attached to prop-
ositions expressing matters about which the speaker, for a variety of reasons,
cannot be entirely certain, such as personal evaluations, opinions said to be
generally held, deductions based on appearances, and so on. In contrast, in
narrative they are attached to propositions expressing inexactness concerning
time, space, and even plot details, to the narrator’s external evaluations, and to
metacomments on the telling of the tale.
Discourse: In (both types of) discourse, the uses of epistemic paren-
theticals can be broadly seen as subjectively epistemic and evidential , func-
tions associated with comparable forms in Present- day English (see above,
Section 5.2 ).
First, they are most often appended to utterances expressing personal opin-
ion, evaluation, or interpretation (e.g., of Scripture), as when the Wife of Bath
expresses the opinion that she made things diffi cult for her husbands (7a) or
qualifi es her grief at her fourth husband’s death (7b):

(7) a. “The bacon was nat fet for hem, I trowe ...” (1387– 1400 Chaucer, CT
D.WB 217)
‘the bacon was not fat for them, I believe’
b. “I wepte but smal, and that I undertake .” (1387– 1400 Chaucer, CT D.WB 592)
‘I wept but little, and that I declare’

Table 5.3 Distribution of fi rst- person epistemic parentheticals in narrative and in discourse in
The Canterbury tales and Troilus and Criseyde

Narrative Discourse

External Internal Primary internal Secondary internal

The Canterbury
tales

824 19 36

Troilus and
Criseyde

7 – 42 2

Source: adapted from Laurel J. Brinton, Pragmatic markers in English: Grammaticalization and
discourse functions. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1996, p. 217; with permission.