More about the textual functions of the Old English adverbial þa

Enkvist, Nils Erik

doi:10.1515/9783110856132.301

Cited by 12 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Þa is, by the same token, descriptive, and it structures narrative discourse, in line with observations about þa as an adverb in the literature, e.g. Enkvist (1986) ;Wårvik (2011;; Links et al (2017). Þonne is used in contexts that are nonfactual: questions, conditionals, and imperatives.…”

Section: The Meaning Of Old English Particles In Contextsupporting

confidence: 70%

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

Kemenade

Links

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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Section: The Meaning Of Old English Particles In Contextsupporting

confidence: 70%

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

Kemenade

Links

2020

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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“…' (Bede_2:9.128.17.1222) Resumptive adverb use in the apodosis reinforces the semantic-pragmatic relationship between the two clauses: ðonne 'then' in (14) is used in conditionals similarly to correlative proforms in correlative constructions like (15) (Bhatt & Pancheva 2006;Links, van Kemenade & Grondelaers 2017). Resumptive adverbs resume the previous clause as backgrounded and structure the discourse by foregrounding the consequence or temporal event in the main clause, establishing textual cohesion and reminding the reader/listener to pay attention to what is coming (van der Horst 1981: 39-41;Enkvist 1986;van Kemenade & Los 2006;Baker 2007: 99;van der Horst 2008: 538-9;Los, 2009;Wårvik 2013). Their position is the multifunctional first position (Spec, CP) of the OE V2 main clause, which is pragmatically associated with discourse continuity (van Kemenade & Los 2006;Los 2009;Los & van Kemenade in press).…”

Section: Conditionals Correlatives and Thenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expressing conditionality in earlier English

Links

2018

English Language and Linguistics

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This article traces the diachronic development of English conditionals with clause-initial subclauses (If you hurt the cat, (then) she will bite you) by means of (frequency) data from three corpora (YCOE, PPCME2 and PPCEME). It investigates the division of labour between (g)if, and (meaning ‘if, suppose/provided that, on condition that’) and verb-initial conditionals from Old to Early Modern English. It is shown that conjunctional conditionals (e.g. if conditionals) have always been most frequent. The limitations on verb-initial conditionals (as they exist in Present-day English) develop diachronically and are related to restrictions on verb movement and choice of verb, and not frequency. Genre preferences, however, seem to exist. The use of then introducing the main clause will be shown to be a reflex of an earlier paratactic structure. Its use over time is influenced by mood and length, the latter being of influence especially in later periods.

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“…Starting with Enkvist's analyses of OE þa 'then; when' (Enkvist 1972(Enkvist , 1986) and, in particular, Brinton's pioneering monograph on "mystery features" of Old and Middle English (Brinton 1996), most attention in OE pragmatic research has until recently been paid to what have been termed "discourse markers" (Schiffrin 1987) or "pragmatic markers" (Brinton 1996). Due to the difficulties of sentence and discourse segmentation arising from the lack of punctuation in OE manuscripts and also due to the oral or oral-literate character of OE texts in general, the discourse-structuring function of adverbs and phrases which segment OE texts was registered in philological approaches to Anglo-Saxon literature before the beginning of historical pragmatics as a discipline proper.…”

Section: Discourse Markersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Within a discourse perspective, þa has been seen to function as a discourse marker denoting foregrounding action, narrative segmentation, or shifts on the discourse level (see, for example, Enkvist 1972Enkvist , 1986Enkvist and Wå rvik 1987;Kim 1992;Brinton 2006). Within a discourse perspective, þa has been seen to function as a discourse marker denoting foregrounding action, narrative segmentation, or shifts on the discourse level (see, for example, Enkvist 1972Enkvist , 1986Enkvist and Wå rvik 1987;Kim 1992;Brinton 2006).…”

Section: Discourse Markersmentioning

confidence: 99%

21 Old English: Pragmatics and discourse

Bergs¹,

Brinton²

2012

Handbücher Zur Sprach- Und Kommunikationswissenschaft / Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science 34.1

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This chapter suggests that OE pragmatics and discourse should be approached from a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective, rather than seeing Old English as a prestage for the later periods of English. It is its cultural and linguistic "otherness" which makes Old English, in spite of the lack of good data, a particularly interesting area for pragmatic study. The different culture(s) of the Anglo-Saxon world required forms for the negotiation of meaning different from those we are familiar with today. Thus the conspicuous lack of structures attesting to politeness as face work, the existence of distinct speech events such as flyting or the prominent role of silence allow cross-cultural and cross-linguistic comparison which both corroborates and challenges issues like the uniformitarian principle. Similarly, the different typological character of the morpho-syntax of Old English allows a degree of word order flexibility that is exploited by discourse strategies.1 Old English discourse: data, texts and discourse communities Pragmatics focuses on how meaning is negotiated, i.e., how speakers and hearers in certain contexts -to echo the title of Austin's (1975Austin's ( [1962) groundbreaking lecture -"do things with words". It thus concerns the analysis of mental processes in speakers and hearers, but also issues of linguistic and social interaction in specific socio-historical and cultural settings. While it is generally, also for speakers and hearers of Present-day languages, hard to isolate the crucial cognitive processes operating in the human minds, the study of OE pragmatics is complicated by at least two further factors: not only, as for all early periods of a language, the lack of good data (see Taavitsainen, Volume 2, Chapter 93), but also the length of the period and consequently and more importantly for the present subject, the changing linguistic and socio-historical conditions during and after the Anglo-Saxon period, which fundamentally affected the bases for and principles of social as well as linguistic interaction. 21 Old English: Pragmatics and discourse 325 Alex Bergs and Laurel Brinton 2012, Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.1), de Gruyter, 325-340 Unauthenticated Download Date | 6/25/16 3:39 PMThe OE period -traditionally considered to last from the middle of the 5th century to about 1100/1150 -is the longest among the conventional periods of English and covers more than 600 years (see von Mengden, Chapter 2), from the time when Germanic tribes, as pagan pirates and mercenaries, invaded Britain to the late Anglo-Saxon England of the 10th and 11th centuries, when the Anglo-Saxon society was one of the most sophisticated societies of the medieval West, renowned for its ecclesiastical, literary, and cultural achievements. Fortuitously, a wide variety of vernacular OE textsmany more than from any of the other early medieval Germanic societies -are extant from the Anglo-Saxon period. The online database Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus (Healey [ed.] 2005), which consists of at least...

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More about the textual functions of the Old English adverbial þa

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

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

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

Expressing conditionality in earlier English

21 Old English: Pragmatics and discourse

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