Chapter published in:
Particles in German, English, and Beyond
Edited by Remus Gergel, Ingo Reich and Augustin Speyer
[Studies in Language Companion Series 224] 2022
► pp. 147–176

Chapter 6
Syntactic change and pragmatic maintenance

The discourse particle then over the history of English

| Radboud University Nijmegen

This chapter presents a corpus-based study of the history of then as a discourse marker in English. It will be shown that the pragmatic use of then and its status as a discourse particle was more or less stable throughout the history of English, even though its syntax changed profoundly.

The precursor of then in Old English occurs on a large scale in a fixed position in questions, imperatives and conditional correlatives, and is presuppositional in the sense that it reflects a speaker’s response to the context, such as surprise or disapproval in questions, reinforcement or downtoning of the directive in imperatives.

From early Middle English onward, the pragmatic use of then in questions and imperatives occurs in available alternative positions in the clause: initially (in yes/no questions and imperatives) and final (in questions). The older particle position became restricted to questions. The finally position was extended to declarative SVO clauses.

The division of labour between particle use and temporal adverb use will be shown to interact, over the late Middle English and early Modern periods, with major syntactic changes that affected each of the clause types in different ways: the loss of V2, the auxiliation of the modals and the rise of do-support, and the loss of V to T movement. Through these developments, the pragmatic use of then has, if anything, expanded. This suggests that its robust discourse function was a powerful drive for maintenance under syntactic change.

Article outline
  • 1.Background and aims
    • 1.1Theoretical background and major syntactic developments in the history of English
  • 2.Discourse particle then in Old English
    • 2.1The syntax of particles
    • 2.2Preposed adverbial and conditional clauses
    • 2.3Interim conclusion
  • 3.The Middle English and later periods
    • 3.1The data in ME, eME and LME
    • 3.2From Middle English to late Modern English
      • 3.2.1Alternative positions for then from Middle English onward
        • 3.2.1.1Questions
        • 3.2.1.2Imperatives
        • 3.2.1.3Subject-initial clauses
  • 4.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.224.06but
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