Cover not available
Part of
Pragmatic Markers and Peripheries
Edited by Daniël Van Olmen and Jolanta Šinkūnienė
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 325] 2021
► pp. 351–382

Chapter 13
Pragmatic markers at the periphery and discourse prominence

The case of English of course

ORCID logo | Aix Marseille University | Laboratoire Parole et Langage

This chapter argues that position interacts with discourse prominence in the development of pragmatic markers. A case study of the English marker of course traces its historical development over Late Modern English to its present-day usage at both left (LP) and right (RP) peripheries. It is argued that of course splits along informational lines: of course-1 becomes more backgrounded while of course-2 bears focus. At LP of course-1 acquires a presentational function while at RP it marks its host as a comment on a previous idea, in a hypotactic discourse structure. The emergence of information-packaging functions may be seen as a further grammaticalization of the PM.

Keywords: pragmatic marker, discourse prominence, periphery, grammaticalization, discourse structure
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Position, prominence and English pragmatic markers
    • 2.1Pragmatic markers and position
    • 2.2Pragmatic markers and discourse prominence
  • 3. Of course in Late Modern English
    • 3.1Data sources
    • 3.2 Of course in the Old Bailey corpus
      • 3.2.1Meanings of of course
      • 3.2.2Position of of course
  • 4. Of course in PDE
    • 4.1 Of course as a pragmatic marker
    • 4.2 Of course in PDE: Functions and contextual uses
    • 4.3 Of course in PDE at LP and RP
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • References
Published online: 13 October 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.325.13lew
References

Sources

Austen, Jane
1908 The Letters of Jane Austen, edited by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. Digital version at Project Gutenberg. [URL]
British National Corpus, v. 2 (BNC World Edition)
2001 Distributed by Oxford University Computing Services on behalf of the BNC Consortium. [URL]
Spoken BNC2014
(Love et al. 2017 Compiled at the University of Lancaster and Cambridge University Press. [URL]
The Old Bailey Corpus 2.0, based on the Proceedings of the Old Bailey
(Hitchcock et al. 2015), compiled at Justus Liebig University Giessen (Huber et al. 2012) <[URL]
Aijmer, Karin
2013 “Analyzing Modal Adverbs as Modal Particles and Discourse Markers.” In Discourse Markers and Modal Particles: Categorization and Description, ed. by Liesbeth Degand, Bert Cornillie, and Paola Pietrandrea, 89–106. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beeching, Kate, and Ulrich Detges
2014 “Introduction.” In Discourse Functions at the Left and Right Periphery, ed. by Kate Beeching, and Ulrich Detges, 1–23. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan
1999 Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Boye, Kasper, and Peter Harder
2012 “A Usage-based Theory of Grammatical Status and Grammaticalization.” Language 88 (1): 1–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Breivik, Leiv E., and Toril Swan
1994 “Initial Adverbials and Word Order in English with Special Reference to the Early Modern English Period.” In Studies in Early Modern English, ed. by Dieter Kastovsky, 11–43. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brinton, Laurel J.
2008 The Comment Clause in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan
2003 “Mechanisms of Change in Grammaticalization: The Role of Frequency.” In Handbook of Historical Linguistics, ed. by Richard D. Janda, and Brian D. Joseph, 602–623. Oxford: Blackwell. Reprinted in Joan Bybee 2007 Frequency of Use and the Organization of Language, 336–357. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Collins Dictionary of the English Language
1979, ed. by Patrick Hanks. London: Collins.Google Scholar
Croft, William
2000 Explaining Language Change: An Evolutionary Approach. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Fraser, Bruce
2010 “Pragmatic Competence: The Case of Hedging.” In New Approaches to Hedging, ed. by Gunther Kaltenböck, Wiltrud Mihatsch, and Stefan Schneider, 15–34. Bingley: Emerald. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hancil, Sylvie, Margje Post, and Alexander Haselow
2015 “Introduction: Final Particles from a Typological Perspective.” In Final Particles, ed. by Sylvie Hancil, Alexander Haselow, and Margje Post, 3–35. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K., and Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen
2004 An Introduction to Functional Grammar, 3rd ed. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Haselow, Alexander
2012a “Discourse Organization and the Rise of Final Then in the History of English.” In English Historical Linguistics 2010, ed. by Irén Hegedüs, and Alexandra Fodor, 153–175. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012b “Subjectivity, Intersubjectivity and the Negotiation of Common Ground in Spoken Discourse: Final Particles in English.” Language and Communication 32: 182–204. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 “Arguing for a Wide Conception of Grammar: The Case of Final Particles in Spoken Discourse.” Folia Linguistica 47 (2): 375–424. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 “Left vs. Right Periphery in Grammaticalization: The Case of Anyway . In New Directions in Grammaticalization Research, ed. by Andrew D. M. Smith, Graeme Trousdale, and Richard Waltereit, 157–186. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 “Intensifying Adverbs ‘Outside the Clause’: A Cognitive Analysis.” In Outside the Clause: Form and Function of Extra-clausal Constituents, ed. by Gunther Kaltenböck, Evelien Keizer, and Arne Lohmann, 379–416. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heine, Bernd
2013 “On Discourse Markers: Grammaticalization, Pragmaticalization or Something Else?” Linguistics 51 (6): 1205–1247. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P., and Beatrice Primus
2015 “Prominence Beyond Prosody – a First Approximation. In Prominences in Linguistics: Proceedings of the pS-prominenceS International Conference, ed. by Amedeo De Dominicis, 38–58. Viterbo: DISUCOM Press.Google Scholar
Hitchcock, Tim, Robert Shoemaker, Clive Emsley, Sharon Howard, and Jamie McLaughlin
2015 The Old Bailey Proceedings Online, 1674–1913. [URL], version 8, March 2018, accessed May 2020.
Holmes, Janet
1988 “ Of Course: A Pragmatic Particle in New Zealand Women’s and Men’s Speech.” Australian Journal of Linguistics 2: 49–74. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huber, Magnus
2007 “The Old Bailey Proceedings, 1674–1834. Evaluating and Annotating a Corpus of 18th- and 19th-century Spoken English.” In Annotating Variation and Change, ed. by Anneli Meurman-Solin, and Arja Nurmi, Helsinki: VARIENG, University of Helsinki. [URL]
Huber, Magnus, Magnus Nissel, and Karin Puga
2016 Old Bailey Corpus 2.0. [URL]
Jasinskaya, Ekaterina, Jörg Mayer, and David Schlangen
2004 “Discourse Structure and Information Structure: Interfaces and Prosodic Realization.” Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure 1: 151–206.Google Scholar
Jasinskaya, Ekaterina, Sofiana Chiriacescu, Marta Donazzan, Klaus von Heusinger, and Stefan Hinterwimmer
2015 “Prominence in Discourse.” In Prominences in Linguistics: Proceedings of the pS-prominenceS International Conference, ed. by Amedeo De Dominicis 134–153. Viterbo: DISUCOM Press.Google Scholar
Johnson’s Dictionary
A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson. First edition 1755, fourth edition 1773. London.
Langacker, Ronald
1991 Foundations of Cognitive Grammar II: Descriptive Application. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Lenker, Ursula
2010 Argument and Rhetoric. Adverbial Connectors in the History of English. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lewis, Diana M.
2003 “Rhetorical Motivations for the Emergence of Discourse Particles, with Special Reference to Of Course .” Belgian Journal of Linguistics 16: 79–91. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lohmann, Arne, and Christian Koops
2016 “Aspects of Discourse Marker Sequencing: Empirical Challenges and Theoretical Implications.” In Outside the Clause: Form and Function of Extra-clausal Constituents, ed. by Gunther Kaltenböck, Evelien Keizer, and Arne Lohmann, 417–446. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Love, Robbie, Claire Dembry, Andrew Hardie, Vaclav Brezina, and Tony McEnery
2017 “The Spoken BNC2014: Designing and Building a Spoken Corpus of Everyday Conversations.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 22 (3): 319–344. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mann, William C., and Sandra A. Thompson
1987 Rhetorical Structure Theory: A theory of Text Organization. ISI Report RS-87-190. Marina del Rey, CA: Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California.Google Scholar
Matthiessen, Christian M. I. M., and Sandra A. Thompson
1988 “The Structure of Discourse and ‘Subordination’.” In Clause Combining in Discourse and Grammar, ed. by John Haiman, and Sandra A. Thompson, 275–329. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Modicom, Pierre-Yves, and Olivier Duplâtre
2020 “The Contribution of Information Structural Strategies to the Rise of Discourse Particles.” In Information Structural Perspectives on Discourse Particles, ed. by Pierre-Yves Modicom, and Olivier Duplâtre, 1–24. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu
1994 “Aspects of Adverbial Change in Early Modern English.” In Studies in Early Modern English, ed. by Dieter Kastovsky, 243–259. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Palmer, Frank
2001 Mood and Modality, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik
1985 A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Rissanen, Matti
1999 “Syntax.” In The Cambridge History of the English Language, vol. III: 1476–1776, ed. by Roger Lass, 187–331. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schourup, Lawrence
1999 “Discourse markers.” Lingua, 107 (3–4): 227–265. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Simon-Vandenbergen, Anne-Marie, and Karin Aijmer
2004 “The Expectation Marker Of Course in a Cross-linguistic Perspective.” Languages in Contrast 4 (1): 13–43. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sweetser, Eve E.
1990 From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taboada, Maite, and William C. Mann
2006 “Rhetorical Structure Theory: Looking Back and Moving Ahead.” Discourse Studies 8 (3): 423–459. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taglicht, Josef
1984 Message and Emphasis: On Focus and Scope in English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth C.
2015 “Investigating “Periphery” from a Functionalist Perspective.” Linguistics Vanguard 1 (1): 119–130. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vallduví, Enric, and Elisabet Engdahl
1996 “The Linguistic Realization of Information Packaging.” Linguistics 34: 459–519. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wichmann, Anne
2011 “Grammaticalization and Prosody.” In The Oxford Handbook of Grammaticalization, ed. by Heiko Narrog, and Bernd Heine, 331–341. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wichmann, Anne, Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen, and Karin Aijmer
2010 “How Prosody Reflects Semantic Change: A Synchronic Case Study of Of Course .” In Subjectification, Intersubjectification and Grammaticalization, ed. by Hubert Cuyckens, Kristin Davidse, and Lieven Vandelanotte, 103–154. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ziv, Yael
2003 “This, I believe, is a Processing Instruction: Discourse Linking via Parentheticals.” In Proceedings of the 18th Conference of the Israel Association for Theoretical Linguistics (IATL 18), ed. by Yehuda N. Falk. [URL] (retrieved October 2020).
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Unuabonah, Foluke & Noloyiso Mtembu
2023. Multilingual pragmatic markers in South African English. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 41:3 ► pp. 264 ff. DOI logo
Ziegeler, Debra
2023. According to NP: A Diachronic Perspective on a Skeptical Evidential. Journal of English Linguistics 51:2 ► pp. 162 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 10 september 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.