Cover not available
Article published In:
Periphery – Diachronic and Cross-Linguistic Approaches
Edited by Yuko Higashiizumi, Noriko O. Onodera and Sung-Ock S. Sohn
[Journal of Historical Pragmatics 17:2] 2016
► pp. 208–230

Alors/donc/then at the right periphery

Seeking confirmation of an inference

| University of the West of England, Bristol
This paper compares the functions and development of right peripheral (RP) alors, donc and then in French and English. These items developed historically from temporal expressions, they express consequence and can serve, intersubjectively, as an appeal to the addressee to confirm previous assumptions. An analysis of the frequency and positions of alors, donc, so and then in contemporary spoken corpora of standard British English and French shows that, though these terms are similar in consequential function, they have different distributions. From a diachronic perspective, drawing on recent theories which highlight the crucial role of contact with Anglo-French in the history of the English language (e.g., Ingham 2012a,b), this paper adduces evidence from the Manières de langage (1396; see Kristol 1995), which suggests that the final positioning of then in English may have arisen as a sense/pragmatic extension on analogy with French donques.
Keywords: donc, then, alors, Anglo-French, sense extension by analogy
Published online: 6 April 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.17.2.03bee
References (46)
Corpora
Anglo-Norman Online Hub. [URL].
British National Corpus (BNC). 1980s–1994. 100 million words of British English. [URL]Google Scholar
Corpus de Référence du Français Parlé (CRFP). 2002. From 40 towns in France, 400,000 words, 82 speakers. Available through a concordancer. [URL].
Corpus of Middle English Verse and Prose. [URL].
FRANTEXT. French literary corpus. 271,599,218 words, tenth century to twenty-first century. [URL].
References
Beeching, Kate. 2007. “Social Identity, Salience and Language Change: The Case of Post-Rhematic quoi ”. In Wendy Ayres-Bennett and Mari Jones (eds), The French Language and Questions of Identity, 140–149. London: Legenda.Google Scholar
. 2009. “Sociolinguistic Factors and the Pragmaticalization of bon in Contemporary Spoken French”. In Kate Beeching, Nigel Armstrong and Françoise Gadet (eds), Sociolinguistic Variation in Contemporary French, 215–229. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2016. Pragmatic Markers: Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beeching, Kate and Ulrich Detges (eds). 2014. Discourse Functions at the Left and Right Periphery: Crosslinguistic Investigations of Language Use and Language Change. Leiden and Boston: Brill.Google Scholar
Bolly, Catherine and Liesbeth Degand. 2009. “Quelle(s) fonction(s) pour donc en français oral ? Du connecteur conséquentiel au marqueur de structuration du discours” [What Function(s) for donc in Spoken French? From a Consequential Connector to a Marker of Discourse Structure]. Lingvisticae Investigationes 32 (1): 1–32. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brinton, Laurel. 2007. “Pathways in the Development of Pragmatic Markers in English”. In Ans Van Kemenade and Bettelou Los (eds), The Handbook of the History of English, 307–334. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Danon-Boileau, Laurent, Annie Meunier, Mary-Annick Morel and Nicolas Tournandre. 1991. “Intégration discursive et intégration syntaxique” [Discourse and Syntactic Integration]. Langages 25 (104): 111–128. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Degand, Liesbeth. 2009. “Describing Polysemous Discourse Markers: What Does Translation Add to the Picture?” In Stef Slembrouck, Miriam Taverniers and Mieke Van Herreweghe (eds), From Will to Well: Studies in Linguistics Offered to Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen, 173–183. Gent: Academia Press.Google Scholar
. 2014. “‘So very fast then’: Discourse Markers at Left and Right Periphery in Spoken French”. In Kate Beeching and Ulrich Detges (eds), Discourse Functions at the Left and Right Periphery: Crosslinguistic Investigations of Language Use and Language Change, 151–178. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Degand, Liesbeth and Benjamin Fagard. 2011 “ Alors between Discourse and Grammar: The Role of Syntactic Position”. Functions of Language 18 (1): 29–56. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deppermann, Arnulf and Henrike Helmer. 2013. “Zur Grammatik des Verstehens im Gespräch: Inferenzen anzeigen und Handlungskonsequenzen ziehen mit also und dann ”. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 32 (1): 1–40. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dostie, Gaétane. 2009. “Discourse Markers and Regional Variation in French: A Lexico-Semantic Approach”. In Kate Beeching, Nigel Armstrong and Françoise Gadet (eds), Sociolinguistic Variation in Contemporary French, 201–14. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fleischman, Suzanne and Marina Yaguello. 2004. “Discourse Markers across Languages? Evidence from English and French”. In Carol Lynn Moder and Aida Martinovic-Zik (eds), Discourse across Languages and Cultures, 129–147. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hansen, Maj-Britt Mosegaard. 1997. “ Alors and donc in Spoken French: A Reanalysis”. Journal of Pragmatics 28 (2): 153–157. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haselow, Alexander. 2011. “Discourse Marker and Modal Particle: The Functions of Utterance-final then in Spoken English”. Journal of Pragmatics 43 (14): 3603–3623. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012a. “Subjectivity, Intersubjectivity and the Negotiation of Common Ground in Spoken Discourse: Final Particles in English”. Language and Communication 32 (2): 182–204. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012b. “Discourse Organization and the Rise of Final then in the History of English”. In Irén Hegedűs and Alexandra Fodor (eds), English Historical Linguistics 2010: Selected Papers from the Sixteenth International Conference of English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 16) , 153–75. 23–27 August 2010. Pécs. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logo
. 2014. “Managing Intersubjective Understanding in Conversational Interaction: Explicated Inferences with so and then ”. Presentation at Discourse Variation and Change Conference . 7–9 April. Newcastle, UK.
Hoffmann, Sebastian. 2005. Grammaticalization and English Complex Prepositions: A Corpus-based Study. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ingham, Richard. 2012a. The Transmission of Anglo-Norman: Language History and Language Acquisition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012b. “Sense Extension through English–French Language Contact in Medieval England: The Case of as ”. In Claudia Lange, Beatrix Weber and Göran Wolf (eds), Communicative Spaces: Variation, Contact, and Change: Festschrift for Ursula Schaefer. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
. 2015. “Spoken and Written Register Differentiation in Pragmatic and Semantic Functions in two Anglo-Norman Corpora”. In Jost Gehrke and Ralf Gippert (eds), Corpus Linguistics and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Language, 269–280. Tübingen: Guenther Narr.Google Scholar
Kemenade, Ans van and Bettelou Los. 2007. “Discourse Adverbs and Clausal Syntax in Old and Middle English”. In Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los (eds), The Handbook of the History of English, 224–248. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Kristol, Andres. 1992. “‘Que dea! Mettes le chapron, paillard, comme tu parles a prodome!’ La représentation de l’oralité dans les Manières de langage du XIVe/XVe siècle” [“Well, now! Cover your head, laddie, when you talk to a gentleman!” The Representation of the Spoken Language in the Manières de Langage of the 14th/15th Century]. Romanistisches Jahrbuch 431: 35–64.Google Scholar
. 1995. Manières de langage (1396, 1399, 1415). (Volume 531). London: Anglo-Norman Text Society.Google Scholar
Luckman de Lopez, Kathryn. 2014. “Pragmatic Markers in Final Position: so and then in Irish English and British English”. Presentation at Discourse Variation and Change Conference . 7–9 April. Newcastle, UK.
Miller, D. Gary. 2012. External Influences on English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Morel, Mary-Annick. 2007. “Le postrhème dans le dialogue oral en français” [The Post-rheme in Spoken Dialogue in French]. L’information Grammaticale 113 (1): 40–46. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pope, Mildred. 1934. From Latin to Modern French with especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman: Phonology and Morphology. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Rissanen, Matti. 2000. “Paths of Loan-Word Grammaticalization: The Case of according to ”. In Christiane Dalton-Puffer and Nikoalus Ritt (eds), Words: Structure, Meaning, Function: A Festschrift for Dieter Kastovky, 249–262. Berlin: Mouton.Google Scholar
Rothwell, William. 1991. “The Missing Link in English Etymology: Anglo-French”. Medium Aevum 601: 173–196. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1994. “The Trilingual England of Geoffrey Chaucer”. Studies in the Age of Chaucer 161: 45–67.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey, Emanuel A. Schegloff and Gail Jefferson. 1974. “A Simplest Systematics for the Organisation of Turn-Taking for Conversation”. Language 50 (4i): 696–735. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sakel, Jeanette. 2007. “Language Contact between Spanish and Mosetén: A Study of Grammatical Integration”. International Journal of Bilingualism 11 (1): 25–53. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah. 1987. Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shinzato, Rumiko. 2007. “(Inter)subjectification, Japanese Syntax and Syntactic Scope Increase”. In Noriko O. Onodera and Ryoko Suzuki (eds), Historical Changes in Japanese: Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity (special issue of Journal of Historical Pragmatics) 8 (2): 171–206. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sweetser, Eve. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trotter, David. 2003. “Not as Eccentric as it Looks: Anglo-French and French French”. Forum for Modern Language Studies 39 (4): 427–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2007. “Anglo-Norman Online Hub Text-base”. Available online at: [URL].
Van der Wouden, Ton and Ad Foolen. 2011. “Dutch Particles in the Right Periphery”. Published as: “Pragmatische partikels in de rechterperiferie”. Nederlandse Taalkunde 16 (3): 307–322. Available online at: [URL]. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wårvik, Brita. 1995. “The Ambiguous Adverbial/Conjunctions þa and þonne in Middle English: A Discourse-Pragmatic Study of then and when in Early English Saints Lives”. In Andreas Jucker (ed.), Historical Pragmatics: Pragmatic Developments in the History of English, 345–357. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (10)

Cited by ten other publications

Beeching, Kate & Ludivine Crible
2022. Crosslinguistic paths of pragmatic development. Pragmatics & Cognition 29:2 ► pp. 195 ff. DOI logo
Heine, Bernd, Gunther Kaltenböck, Tania Kuteva & Haiping Long
2021. Chapter 1. On the rise of discourse markers. In Studies at the Grammar-Discourse Interface [Studies in Language Companion Series, 219], ► pp. 24 ff. DOI logo
Kolbe-Hanna, Daniela & Natalia Filatkina
2021. Chapter 12. The diachronic origin of English I mean and German ich meine. In Pragmatic Markers and Peripheries [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 325], ► pp. 327 ff. DOI logo
Ruskan, Anna & Marta Carretero
2021. Chapter 15. A cross-linguistic look at the right periphery. In Pragmatic Markers and Peripheries [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 325], ► pp. 415 ff. DOI logo
Van Olmen, Daniël & Jolanta Šinkūnienė
2021. Introduction. Pragmatic markers and peripheries. In Pragmatic Markers and Peripheries [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 325], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Cuenca, Maria Josep
2020. Defective Connective Constructions: Some Cases in Catalan and Spanish. Corpus Pragmatics 4:4 ► pp. 423 ff. DOI logo
Lastres-López, Cristina
2019. Chapter 3. Conditionals in spoken courtroom and parliamentary discourse in English, French, and Spanish. In Corpus-based Research on Variation in English Legal Discourse [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 91], ► pp. 51 ff. DOI logo
Chen, Jiajun
2018. (Inter)subjectification at the left and right periphery: Deriving Chinese pragmatic marker bushi from the negative copula. Language Sciences 66 ► pp. 83 ff. DOI logo
Chen, Jiajun
2021. Systemic change and interactional motivation. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 22:1 ► pp. 69 ff. DOI logo
Higashiizumi, Yuko
2016. The development of confirmation/agreement markers away from the RP in Japanese. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 17:2 ► pp. 282 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 july 2024. 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.