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Part of
English Historical Linguistics: Historical English in contact
Edited by Bettelou Los, Chris Cummins, Lisa Gotthard, Alpo Honkapohja and Benjamin Molineaux
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 359] 2022
► pp. 165–180

Chapter 9
Speech acts in the history of English

Gaps and paths of evolution

| University of Cologne

Throughout the history of the English language we find different sets of speech-act verbs which seem to reflect the most prominent speech acts. These inventories change across the periods of the English language, revealing remarkable lexical gaps. This chapter investigates some of these gaps and how they were filled in the course of history. The basic result of this chapter is somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand it suggests that the study of speech-act gaps and paths of evolution of speech acts, together with a systematic study of speech-act loanwords is a highly promising but completely unexplored area in historical pragmatics. On the other hand, not all donor languages may have exerted a significant influence in the long run.

Keywords: speech acts, Old English, Middle English, Scandinavian influence, loanwords
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Expressive speech acts in Old English: The case of apologising
  • 3.The evolution of the speech act of apologising: Speech act first
  • 4.The evolution of the speech act of congratulating: Loanword first
  • 5.The evidence of speech-act loanwords: A pilot study on Scandinavian loans in Middle English
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • References
Published online: 2 February 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.359.09koh
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