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10 Concluding Remarks: Pathways of Change
10.1 Introduction
In the historical study of pragmatic markers, two major questions have pre-
dominated. The fi rst centers on the process of change that best accounts for the
historical development of pragmatic markers: grammaticalization, lexicaliza-
tion, or an entirely distinct process, pragmaticalization. As these processes are
discussed in Chapter 1 (see Section 1.5 ) and in much of my work on pragmatic
markers over the years (see, e.g., Brinton 2002 , 2008 , 2012 ), and as many of
the studies presented in this book (see, especially, Section 3.4 , 4.3.2 , 5.6.4 ) are
understood as cases of grammaticalization, I will not rehearse the arguments
in favor of grammaticalization here. But they rest, in large part, upon a broad
view of grammar in which pragmatic functions are seen as encompassed by
“grammar,” since many aspects of grammar proper have a discourse- pragmatic
dimension and many aspects of pragmatics have a grammatical dimension.
The second question, which I have focused on in this book, relates to the
historical sources of pragmatic markers and the diachronic pathways by which
they arise. One approach to the trajectories of pragmatic markers has assumed
that synchronic correspondences or synchronic paths of development may pro-
vide a clue to the diachronic pathways. For example, the correspondence (or
transformation) between main clause and epistemic parenthetical we see in I
believe the world is fl at ~ The world is fl at, I believe or between main clause
and epistemic disjunct adverbial we see in It is possible that the world is fl at
~ Possibly the world is fl at has been assumed to mirror historical develop-
ments, with the parenthetical and disjunct forms arising out of the main clause.
But in order to fi nd these suggestions plausible from a diachronic perspective,
we need to be able to show that the source constructions exist – and exist in
suffi cient numbers – at the crucial stage in which the pragmatic markers fi rst
begin to appear. A second approach to pragmatic markers has tried to account
for large classes of pragmatic markers (such as those arising in adverbs or
adverbial constructions) as following clear unilinear paths, for example from
predicate adverb to sentence adverb to pragmatic marker. While such proposals
are useful, they tend to present the development of pragmatic markers with a