The Evolution of Pragmatic Markers in English Pathways of Change

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I/You Admit and Admittedly

b. But suffer thou ... that the lawe and the feith which thi chirche at eny tyme
kepith be received and admitted to falle undir this examinacioun (1456
Pecock, Book of faith (Trin- C B.14.45) 132 [MED])
‘but suffer you ... that the law and the faith that the church at any time keeps
be received and allowed to fall under this examination’
c. I schal ... stryue ... to admitte þilke þing whiche I may not fl itte (c1425
(a1520) Lydgate, Troy book (Aug A.4) [MED])
‘I shall ... strive ... to accept that thing which I may not oppose’
d. Ye must hastly to admitte a poreman (1481 The Stonor letters and papers ,
2.125 [MED])
‘you must hastily admit a poor man’

Thus, while admit in Middle English can have a speech act meaning, either ‘to
agree or consent to (sth.)’ or ‘to admit (sth.) to be true’ (MED, s.v. admitten
(v.), def. 3), it has not yet acquired a performative function.
Traugott and Dasher argue ( 2002 : 203) that the expected course of develop-
ment for speech act verbs is the following:

event verb > speech act verb > performative (discourse deictic) verb

Only in the post- Middle English period do we begin to see performative uses of
admit. The dates of the earliest examples of I admit with clausal complements
found in my corpora are from the fi rst quarter of the sixteenth century (see
Table 6.5 ). The form with an explicit that - complementizer precedes the form
without, as would be expected. The non- modalized I admit appears before the
modalized forms I must/ will/ have to admit.
The earliest examples of performative I (modal) admit with and without that
are given in (9):

(9) a. I do admitte that every man maye vse t[h] e same maner, if so he please
with the assent of his wife. (1529 tr. M. Luther in tr. Erasmus Exhort. Studye
Script. sig. Bvii v  [OED])

Table 6.5 The fi rst occurrences of performative I (modal) admit with clausal complements

I admit that S 1529

I admit Ø S 1574

I must admit that S 1689

I must admit Ø S 1817

I will admit that S 1566

I will admit Ø S 1698

I have to admit that S 1899

I have to admit Ø S 1920

Source: adapted from Laurel J. Brinton, “From performative to concessive disjunct:

I/you admit and admittedly ,” in Merja Kytö, John Scahill, and Harumi Tanabe (eds.),

Language change and variation from Old English to Late Modern English. Bern: Peter

Lang, 2010, p. 293; with permission.