Diachronic studies of discourse markers suggest they follow a unidirectional developmental path, from propositional to textual and expressive uses. The present study tests whether children acquire the propositional (literal) before the expressive (pragmatic) functions of two adversative… read more
Metacommenters allow speakers to take some distance from a particular lexical selection, or enter into a negotiation with their interlocutors. A variational pragmatics approach is taken to the investigation of metacommenting in English and French, in Europe and Canada/the US, drawing on a range of… read more
This article aims to illustrate what a contrastive perspective, combined with sociolinguistic and corpus approaches, can bring to the investigation of the evolution of pragmatic functions which emerge through language contact (Ingham 2012a) and pragmatic borrowing (Andersen 2014). A recent… read more
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… read more
Traugott and Dasher (2002) suggest that the frequency of certain contextual interpretations of an item can end up by eclipsing its original sense. Pragmatic markers, lying at the extreme right of the spectrum of semantic change where the core meaning is almost entirely bleached, are often… read more
Functional linguists are in general agreement that semantic change may be triggered as part of the negotiation of meaning in interactional contexts: a ‘one-off’ contextual implicature generalises to become a new core meaning of a lexical item (Traugott and Dasher, 2002). In what ways, however, does… read more
Functional linguists are in general agreement that semantic change may be triggered as part of the negotiation of meaning in interactional contexts: a ‘one-off’ contextual implicature generalises to become a new core meaning of a lexical item (Traugott and Dasher, 2002). In what ways, however,… read more
The multifunctional nature of discourse-marking bon (well) is well-attested in the literature (Auchlin, 1981; Winther, 1985, Hansen, 1998a and b, Jayez, 2004). Its adverbial and interjective uses can, according to Hansen (1998a), be related to its canonical adjectival use (as in ‘C’est bon’ ‘It’s… read more
This paper posits that certain “qualificatory” semantic primes are recruited to serve face-management needs in a metonymic Meaning1>Meaning2 relationship at what Traugott and Dasher (2002) have called the intersubjective, non-truth-conditional, procedural, scope-over-discourse end of the… read more
