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New Trends in Grammaticalization and Language Change
Edited by Sylvie Hancil, Tine Breban and José Vicente Lozano
[Studies in Language Companion Series 202] 2018
► pp. 291–314

(Inter)subjectification and paradigmaticization

The case study of the final particle but

| University of Rouen

This paper proposes a diachronic analysis of final but in a corpus of Northern English, a dialect where final particles represent a characteristic feature of the grammar. Recently, much emphasis was given to the study of but from a synchronic perpective in American and Australian English. This investigation closes the gap and is pursued in Northern English in the DECTE corpus, extending over a 50 years’ span (1960–2010). The various semantico-pragmatic values are studied diachronically. It is shown that final but undergoes the process of paradigmaticization as it enters into the paradigm of final particles by enriching it with lexical and structural persistence. Besides, the subjective values are evaluated on Traugott and Dasher’s (2002) subjectivity cline.

Keywords: final particle, Northern English, paradigmaticization, persistence, subjectification
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous literature
  • 3.Presentation of the data
  • 4.Diachronic evolution of semantico-pragmatic meanings in the corpus
    • 4.1Textual values
    • 4.2Attitudinal values
    • 4.3Social value
  • 5.Lexical, procedural and structural persistence
  • 6.(Inter)subjectification and Traugott’s (2010) subjectivity cline
  • 7.Paradigmaticization
    • 7.1Word order, grammaticalization and paradigms
    • 7.2Final but and paradigmaticization
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 December 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.202.12han
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