Argument and Rhetoric

Lenker, Ursula

doi:10.1515/9783110216066

Cited by 52 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Brinton 1996;2017); connectors (e.g. Lenker 2010). The work on Old English particles here is, however, a novel addition to this literature.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 78%

“…Discourse particles in Old English are not particularly well-studied so far. Present-day English has no specific discourse particles in the sense studied here, even though there is an extensive literature on discourse/pragmatic markers, also called connectors (Schiffrin 1987;Brinton 1996;2017;Lenker 2010;Haselow 2011;Fraser 2009 and many others). Van Gelderen (2001) deals specifically with what she calls "mood particles" in the history of English, which in her treatment seem to include a broader category of adverbs that may express speaker attitude, in particular epistemic adverbs such as no doubt, realistically, truly, certainly.…”

Section: Old English Particlesmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Further refinement of this speculation must await further research. The development of clause-final then may be viewed as part of a larger development of what Lenker (2010) dubs the rise of final connectives over the late ME and later periods.…”

Section: Middle English and Beyondmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Discourse particles in early English: Clause structure, pragmatics and discourse management

Kemenade

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2020

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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This article presents a case study on the shifting interaction between clause structure, information structure and discourse organisation in the history of English, as evidenced by the development from Old to Middle English of what we will call discourse particles: discourse-cohesive devices grammaticalised from adverbs. These include the Old English elements þa, þonne, nu, when used in a clause-internal position.We will show that these discourse particles have the following properties: 1) pragmatically: they express the response of the speaker to the context/common ground shared by speaker and hearer, and thus play a pivotal role in common ground management; 2) relation to clause type: the pragmatic meanings of discourse particles are co-determined by the illocutionary force of the clause types in which they occur, including main clause questions, imperatives, hwaet exclamatives, and correlative subclauses; 3) syntactically and information structurally: discourse particles occur in a fixed position in the clause that separates discourse-given from discourse-new information. Discourse particles thus form a subtle lynchpin between pragmatics, discourse management and clause structure.Some particles were lost in the transition to Middle English, but then and now continued to be attested in questions and imperatives, in the same clause-internal position as in OE. Towards the end of the ME period, we see a positional shift to clause-final position, though maintaining the discourse linking character of the particle. This change is due to a syntactic change tightening the use of strict SVO word order and narrowing the use of clause-medial material.

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“…Brinton 1996;2017); connectors (e.g. Lenker 2010). The work on Old English particles here is, however, a novel addition to this literature.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 78%

Section: Old English Particlesmentioning

confidence: 97%

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Discourse particles in early English: Clause structure, pragmatics and discourse management

Kemenade

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2020

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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“…The present investigation will suggest a similar functional interpretation of word order preferences for linking adverbials in Late Modern English and Present-day English. It is partly based on findings of my earlier research into changes in the morphological make-up, semantics and positional flexibility of adverbial connectors in the history of English (Lenker 2010). With respect to adverbials and information packaging, the study ties in with research on the discourse functions of Old English þa/þonne 'then, when' by van Kemenade, Los, Milicev (and others), who consider these particular adverbs to serve as "discourse partitioners" (separating topic from focus material) or "focus markers" (e.g.…”

Section: Information Structure and Syntactic Change: Introductory Remmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Lenker

2014

Contact, Variation, and Change in the History of English

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After the fixation of English word order to SVO, adverbials have come to be the only flexible sentence constituent in unmarked sentences. So far, however, there has only been little research into the specific discourse functions of the different positions of adverbials. In an earlier study on the diachrony of English adverbial connectors (Lenker 2010), it emerged that medial instead of initial placement of connectors such as however or therefore is a relatively recent phenomenon, becoming more frequent in the Late Modern English period. In a pilot study on the discourse functions of linking and stance adverbials, the present chapter suggests that two different medial positions should be distinguished: in "post-initial position", these adverbials focus attention on the preceding elements (a frame-setting adverbial or a subject), similar to focus adverbs such as only or particularly. In the other medial positions, they function as discourse partitioners, highlighting the partition of topic and comment/focus material. This variation will here be seen as a response to the loss of verb-second in English, similar to other syntactic innovations such as unusual passives and stressed-focus clefts. * I would like to thank Peter Jitschin for his contributions to this chapter (see Jitschin 2012) and Anneli Meurman-Solin, an anonymous reviewer and the editors of this volume for their many most helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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Historical Dialectology: Space as a Variable in the Reconstruction of Regional Dialects

Meurman-Solin

2012

The Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics

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Argument and Rhetoric

Cited by 52 publications

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Discourse particles in early English: Clause structure, pragmatics and discourse management

Discourse particles in early English: Clause structure, pragmatics and discourse management

Knitting and splitting information

Historical Dialectology: Space as a Variable in the Reconstruction of Regional Dialects

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