From clause to pragmatic marker

Abstract

Propositional attitude predicates, such as Englishthink,guessandseem, occur parenthetically in many languages. In this article we pay attention to a group of propositional attitude predicates which can be labelled epistemic/evidential, namelyappear,look,seemandsound, and which, in addition to degree of certainty, also give an indication of the evidential source. In this study we describe the different parentheticals available with these verbs, paying special attention tolike-parentheticals (e.g.Going to be a big one, looks like), a development characteristic of American English. Using data from theCorpus of Historical American English(COHA, Davies 2010-) and theCorpus of Contemporary American English(COCA, Davies 2008-), we explore whether these developments can be conceptualised in terms of grammaticalisation and (inter)subjectification. In the structural domain, these parentheticals show fixation, decategorialisation and fusion. In the semantic-pragmatic domain, they show signs of generalisation of meaning and increased (inter)subjectivity.

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