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Part of
Pragmatic Markers and Peripheries
Edited by Daniël Van Olmen and Jolanta Šinkūnienė
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 325] 2021
► pp. 327–350

Chapter 12
The diachronic origin of English I mean and German ich meine

ORCID logo | University of Trier
ORCID logo | University of Hamburg

The pragmatic markers ich meine in German and I mean in English are similar, though not equivalent, in the main aspects of their meaning and function. Both have also been widely studied, yet research on German ich meine has focused on modern data and functions. From a diachronic perspective, we investigate whether the matrix clause function, as claimed in the literature for spoken modern German, is a likely origin of the pragmatic marker or whether, as in English, a derivation from I mean followed by a phrasal complement seems more likely. Furthermore, we assess how well the origins of the pragmatic functions of I mean can be sufficiently described as constructionalization rather than grammaticalization and what role the left periphery plays in this constructionalization process.

Keywords: diachronic linguistics, German, English, Construction Grammar
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical framework
  • 3. I mean and ich meine in modern English and German
    • 3.1 I mean in modern English
    • 3.2 Ich meine in modern written and spoken German
  • 4.The diachronic development of I mean and ich mein(e)
    • 4.1The development of the pragmatic marker I mean
    • 4.2The development of the pragmatic marker ich meine
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Corpora and online dictionaries
  • References
Published online: 13 October 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.325.12kol
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