“But I Hate Him Just the Same”: On the Rise of Concessive Markers with Same

Abstract

Concessivity in English is often associated with structures like Although it was hot, she went running. Although introduces a subordinate clause. There are also several markers of concessivity associated with coordinate structures, among them, all the same and nevertheless. The development of coordinate markers of concessivity has received little attention. Here I compare the histories of three markers that arose from expressions of identity: all the same, just the same, and at the same time. All arose at various times in Late Modern English. Rich rhetorical contexts for the development of concessive uses of all the same ‘exactly the same’ are attested in corpora. Contexts for the later development in the US of just the same are less rich, and analogy to all the same is probable. Both came to be well entrenched in concessive use and are used in clause-final as well as clause-initial and occasionally clause-medial position. By contrast, at the same time functions only marginally as a concessive. It is also used as an elaborator and is not attested in clause-final position. Data are analyzed from the perspective of Diachronic Construction Grammar. Implications for some current debates are discussed, specifically for establishing when a construction has come into being, what kinds of contexts enable this emergence, and what level of abstraction is appropriate for analysis of sets of related constructions. Finally, some modifications of hypotheses about position of connectives relative to the clause are suggested.