14 Pragmatic Markers: Synchronic and Diachronic
(2) a. interrogative adverb : Why hasn’t the international community responded?
(2015 New York Times [ The corpus of contemporary American English
(COCA)])^16
b. conjunction : On the other hand, I understand why the protesters are angry.
(2015 Mother Jones [COCA])
c. pragmatic marker : Do you want to agree with the president everything, why
just concede the fact that he is a better foreign policy president than you will
ever be? (2012 Fox Debate Reaction [COCA])
According to Traugott , this shows a movement from the propositional to the
textual to the interpersonal component. The pragmatic marker why acts “as
an expression of surprise,” already in Early Modern English ( Oxford English
dictionary [OED]: s.v. why , adv. [n. and int.], def. 7a). A similar cline can
be adduced for so , which develops from a manner adverb (e.g., Don’t hold
the scissors so ) to a conjunction expressing result (e.g., I must leave now so
(that) I arrive on time ) to a pragmatic marker which signals an inference from
the preceding information ( John’s light is burning, so he is home ; see Section
2.4.3 ). In similar fashion, like transitions from a preposition to a complemen-
tizer to a pragmatic marker (see Romaine and Lange 1991 ):
(3) a. preposition : Dropping off items like food or clothing at donation centers
(2014 U.S. Catholic [COCA])
b. conjunction : A lot of us are going to feel like we’ve lost a family member
(2015 Astronomy [COCA])
c. pragmatic marker : “We’re like old pals,” he says. (2015 Virginia Quarterly
Review [COCA])
The ubiquitous OE form, þa ‘then,’ also shows uses as an adverb, conjunction
(especially when correlated þa ... þa ‘then ... when’), and pragmatic marker,
though the sequential development from one state to the other would be diffi cult
to establish as all uses exist already in early Old English. Its function as a prag-
matic marker has been well studied: It has been seen as a marker of narrative
segmentation, foreground “dramatizer,” sign of colloquial speech, peak marker,
and topic shifter (see Brinton 1996 : 9– 11, 2006 : 30 for details of these studies).
Chapter 2 examines the development of OE hwæt ‘what’ from an interroga-
tive pronoun/ adverb/ adjective to an interrogative/ relative complementizer to a
pragmatic marker denoting common or shared knowledge:
(4) a. adverb : Hwæt sceal ic ma riman yfel endeleas (Jul 505)^17
‘why must I recount more endless evil’
b. conjunction : God ana wat hwæt him weaxendum winter bringað (Fort 8)
‘God alone knows what the winter brings for the growing one’
16 See Appendix for information on the corpora used in this book.
17 All OE examples are cited from the Dictionary of Old English web corpus (DOEC), following
the textual abbreviations used there.