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I/You Admit and Admittedly
it contradicts some aspect of the speaker’s position (Leech 1983 : 105– 106).
Grouping admit with acknowledge , concede , confess , and confi de , Wierzbicka
( 1987 : 313) sees its meaning as primarily concessive: “To admit something
means to say something that one would normally be reluctant to say, and to
say it out of respect for truth” or the desire not to lie. Pressure to use the verb
comes either overtly from the addressee or from the speaker’s anticipation of
such pressure. Wierzbicka paraphrases the semantic structure of I admit as
follows:
I say: X.
I know that you would want me to say it.
I assume one could think that I wouldn’t want to say it.
I say this because I don’t want to say what is not true.
I assume you understand that it is diffi cult for me to say it.6.2.2 I (Modal) Admit
According to Biber et al. ( 1999 : 490), the verb admit is among a small set of
verbs in Present- day English that occurs over 60 percent of the time with a
modal auxiliary rather than as a tensed verb. COCA evidence suggests that the
only modals or semi- modals of high frequency with admit are must , will (’ll) ,
or have/ had to.^3 Fraser ( 1975 ) notes that I must admit , I have (got) to admit ,
and I will (’ll) admit all function as “hedged performatives” achieving per-
formative force through implicature:
(a) In the case of must , if a speaker has an obligation to perform some act,
one can infer that the speaker will perform that action (Fraser 1975 : 194).
Must also implies a sense of helplessness; the speaker would like to
be relieved of at least some of the onus of the consequences, such as
not antagonizing the hearer or countering the hearer’s views (Fraser
1975 : 196).^4
(b) In the case of will , if a speaker asserts the intent to perform some act,
one can infer that the speaker will actually perform the act (Fraser
1975 : 205).
Because the performance of the speech act can be inferred in both cases, the
subsequent utterance of the direct speech act would be redundant: I must/ will
admit is equivalent to I admit.
3 COCA yields 522 examples of I must admit , 552 examples of I will (’ll) admit , and 966 exam-
ples of I have/ had to admit (searched March 20, 2016). The next most frequent modal is can
with 27 examples.
4 The explanation would also presumably apply to deontic have (got) to.