The syntactic status of clause-initial complement-taking predicates has been controversially discussed in the literature with analyses ranging from main clause to parenthetical. This chapter sheds light on the question by providing a usage-based account of 200 occurrences of initial I think in a corpus of spoken English. It investigates to what extent the two formal cues (i) presence or absence of the that-complementizer and (ii) prosodic prominence provide evidence for the relative prominence of I think. The data present diverging evidence, which can be reconciled however by (i) adopting a dynamic model of grammar and (ii) reassessing the function of the that-complementizer in spoken language, viz. as a filler used for rhythmic purposes or to give weight to the initial clause.
2020. Prosody and formation of Modern Chinese parenthetical CTMP ni xiang ‘you think’: A conjoining pathway account. Australian Journal of Linguistics 40:3 ► pp. 369 ff.
2019. Using the BNC and the Spoken BNC2014 to Study the Syntactic Development ofI ThinkandI’m Sure. English Studies 100:6 ► pp. 710 ff.
Nuyts, Jan & Karolien Janssens
2019. Parentheticals revisited: The case of Dutchdenken. Folia Linguistica 53:s40-s2 ► pp. 475 ff.
KAATARI, HENRIK
2016. Variation across two dimensions: testing the Complexity Principle and the Uniform Information Density Principle on adjectival data. English Language and Linguistics 20:3 ► pp. 533 ff.
Kaatari, Henrik
2018. On the syntactic status of I 'm sure. Corpora 13:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
2021. References. In Foundations of Familiar Language, ► pp. 386 ff.
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