With the booming of discourse analysis in the late 20th century, pragmatic markers have been found to figure prominently in the organization of discourse as well as the fulfillment of discourse functions.Footnote [1] Laurel J. Brinton’s The Evolution of Pragmatic Markers in English makes a significant contribution to the diachronic study of discourse markers by tracing their evolutionary processes and origins, offering gripping panorama of the history of pragmatic markers in English.
The book consists of nine chapters. Following Chapter 1, ‘Pragmatic markers: Synchronic and diachronic’, a brief introduction of the pragmatic markers and their development pathways, the book is divided into two parts. Part I (Chapters 2–4), ‘From lexical item to pragmatic marker’, mainly deals with the path from single lexical items to pragmatic markers, with examples from three periods of English, viz. Old English, Middle English, and Modern English. Part II (Chapters 5–9), ‘From clausal construction to pragmatic marker’, concentrates on the origins from biclausal structures, adverbial clauses and cleft constructions.
Chapter 1 initially provides various definitions of pragmatic markers. As far as the functions of pragmatic markers are concerned, the author employs Halliday’s (Reference Halliday and Lyons1970) identification of three functional-semantic modes of language: ideational, textual and interpersonal. After the book’s central notion has been introduced, the author explains why it is possible to conduct a diachronic study of pragmatic markers, for it relies heavily on naturally occurring spoken data. Pragmatic markers are, however, not exclusive to oral forms. They also occur in written discourse, and are available to ‘speech-based’ sources, such as Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus (Old English period) and A Corpus of English Dialogues (1560–1760). The author then briefly discusses some major syntactic sources and semantic pathways of evolution. For the progression of pragmatic markers, Brinton contends that grammaticalization (if viewed broadly) is better than lexicalization and pragmaticalization on the grounds that (i) many central characteristics shared by pragmatic markers with the grammaticalization process are not found in the process of lexicalization, and (ii) pragmaticalization can be seen as a subtype of grammaticalization (Brinton Reference Brinton1996, Degand & Evers-Vermeul Reference Degand and Evers-Vermeul2015).
The first part begins with Chapter 2, ‘Old English hwœt’. According to dictionaries, traditional views assert that exclamatory hwœt functions as ‘interjection’ or attention-calling which is similar to what (as well as how and why) in Middle English, and you know in Present-day English. When hwœt appears sentence-initially, it acts as a marker of shared knowledge and serves the interpersonal function, similar to you know in contemporary English. When combined with ƥa, it implicates the preceding event or situation, like so in Present-day English. In Old English, hwœt may combine with eala and la (eala hwœt and hwœt la), expressing ‘surprise’ and having emotive functions, like what in Middle English and Present-day English. Hwœt/what in Old and Middle English serves textual functions such as ‘contextual implication’, and interpersonal functions such as ‘shared knowledge’, ‘speaker surprise’ and ‘attention-getting’. All these functions can date back to the propositional functions of hwœt as an interrogative. Together with examples over time and figures illustrating paths of development, the evolution of hwœt, albeit complex, is clearly delineated.
Chapter 3, ‘Middle English whilom’, investigates whilom from its origin in Old English as an adverb meaning ‘at times, sometimes’ to its use as a pragmatic marker ‘once upon a time’. Brinton argues that the early development of whilom is similar to the process of while since both are grammaticalization. Then whilom develops independently from the adverbial use to conjunctive and pragmatic use, which can be seen as a branch pathway of the development of while, as while follows the path from noun to adverb to conjunction to pragmatic marker. The adjectival whilom, which involves semantic expansion, is inconsistent with grammaticalization. Apparently, the evolutionary change of whilom shows a transformation from a more grammatical (adverb) to less grammatical or more semantic (adjective) category. Finally, the author proposes that the shift from adverb to adjective may be explained by ‘gradience’. Chapter 4, ‘Modern English only and if only’, first explores the meaning, function and status of conjunctive only in Present-day English, then turns to its historical development, and later presents an account of if only. The pathway of only is in line with ‘free adverb
${>}$
focusing adverb
${>}$
conjunction
${>}$
pragmatic marker’, which is essentially a grammaticalization path. Besides, there are many other ways that only resembles a pragmatic marker (102–104). Seen from abundant examples, only has the typical meaning ‘but’. Comparisons are then made with but that, except that and save that. From the detailed comparisons, only has both interpersonal function (introducing a turn-initial object, indicating agreement or politeness) and textual function (shifting or resuming topic). Unlike other conjunctions, such as but and because, only does not serve as a freestanding or sentence-final pragmatic marker, while if only does. Additionally, the evolution of if only is from full biclausal structure to elliptical if-clause to freestanding if only clause to pragmatic marker. In addition, if only clauses belong to a larger category of ‘insubordinated’ clauses (consisting of if- and that-clauses), which are prevalent in various languages.
The second part of the book starts with Chapter 5, ‘Epistemic parentheticals’, focusing on the pathways from clausal construction to pragmatic marker. Epistemic parentheticals refer to constructions containing first-person subjects and verbs expressing supposition, evidence, expectation or belief, which are classified as Know-verbs by the author, such as I think, I guess, etc. Know-parentheticals such as I gesse, I trowe and I woot in Present-day English express epistemic (I think, I believe, etc.), subjective (I know, I think, etc.), evidential (I hear, as I’m told, etc.), and interpersonal (I guess, etc.) meanings. Brinton argues that first-person parentheticals cannot originate from Old English, due to lack of enough resources of epistemicity, nor from matrix clauses. Besides, the parentheticals in Middle English are regarded as adverbial clauses with ƥœs (ƥe) and swa (so as) in Old English, having anaphorical functions, and with loss of the adverbial complementizer, the parentheticals finally turn to pragmatic markers. Semantically, epistemic meaning of parentheticals can date back to evidential meaning.
Chapter 6, ‘
$I$
/You admit and admittedly’, deals with the synchronic and diachronic study of admit and its related forms (i.e. admitted, admittedly,
$I$
/you admit) and their relations. Admit initially acts as an event verb, then a speech act verb and a performative/procedural structure (
$I$
/you admit S) and finally to
$I$
/you admit (as a parenthetical, but not an adverbial structure). Admittedly is evolved from adjective (admitted) to disjunct adjective to subjunct adjective. The diachronic evolution of I admit is consistent with the matrix clause hypothesis. In view of the specificity of disjunct adverbials (e.g. some have first-person epistemic parenthetical usages while others not; some correspond to performative verbs while others do not), more work is needed to elaborate the relationship between epistemicity and performativity.
Chapter 7, ‘Forms of say: That said and I’m just saying’. As a comment clause, say is active throughout the history of English and especially frequent in contemporary English. This chapter discusses various forms of say (that/this is said, having said that/this, etc.) and their evolution pathways. Syntactically, the development of these forms is in accordance with the matrix clause hypothesis. Semantically, say and other related forms may originally derive from literal to non-literal meaning and gradually expand to numerous pragmatic functions. For example, that/this said functions as a concessive marker, whereas I’m just saying indicates previous discourse, etc.
Chapter 8, ‘Two politeness parentheticals: If I may say so and for what it’s worth’, addresses their development syntactically and semantically. They are both used to express opinions and protect the hearer’s negative face, and hence serve politeness functions. Syntactically, they originated from insubordinated clauses to full biclausal structures. Semantically, they both evolved from contentive to pragmatic meaning and experienced an expansion in subjectivity and intersubjectivity with politeness meanings turning into conventional meanings.
Chapter 9, ‘What’s more and whatever’, brings to an end the study of what (hwœt) begun in Chapter 2. Syntactically, what’s more has many possible sources, from pseudo-cleft construction to cleft construction or to sentential relative structure. Although difficult to figure out its source construction, what’s more can be seen as experiencing grammaticalization and acquiring subjective and intersubjective meanings, such as expressing speaker emotions, expansion of a text, concerning speaker emphasis, etc. The source of pragmatic marker whatever is from a second-person clause of desire or saying (whatever you please/say). Like other chapters, two main pragmatic markers are compared with each other and with other related forms, which render the development ways and sources more evidential.
In the concluding chapter, two main issues are highlighted as the top priorities in dealing with the history of pragmatic markers: process of change and historical sources. For the evolutionary process of pragmatic markers, this book holds that grammaticalization can provide the best explanation. For historical sources, two approaches can be employed. One is to examine the synchronic correspondences or synchronic paths of evolution. The other is to treat vast classes of pragmatic markers (such as those from adverbs, adverbial constructions) as following clear unilinear paths. In the end, the author proposes an alternative approach to pragmatic markers, Construction Grammar (CG). Within the CG framework which treats all linguistic units as form–meaning pairings, pragmatic markers can be construed as constructions with specific forms and functions.
Methodologically, it investigates the evolutionary processes of pragmatic markers within the grammaticalization framework. What should be noted is that the author unequivocally treats pragmaticalization as a subtype of grammaticalization (see Chapter 1; also Brinton Reference Brinton1996), albeit she admits that the relationship between them has been of great controversy. As we know, grammaticalization essentially involves change of lexical/content words into functional/grammatical words, whereas pragmaticalization essentially involves change of linguistic expressions from contentive to pragmatic meaning. With respect to the pragmatic markers discussed in the book, it would be clearer if grammaticalization and pragmaticalization could be treated as two independent processes, on the grounds that at least some instances have salient pragmatic rather than grammatical functions. For example, whatever clearly has a (negative) emotive function, and if I may say so apparently has a politeness function and is often used to protect ‘face’.
To sum up, this book clearly delineates the development pathways and origins (both syntactically and semantically) of pragmatic markers, with a particular focus on the ‘how’ of development. Additionally, the book is hugely informative in that it is blessed with a huge number of reviews, theories, findings, explanations, various comparisons and thought-provoking suggestions and questions. Besides, the book ranges from Old English to Present-day English with a wealth of examples, which should help readers better understand the different roles played by pragmatic markers in different contexts. All in all, this comprehensive book is an excellent contribution to several fields, such as historical linguistics, discourse analysis and pragmatics. It is therefore a worthwhile read for anyone interested in these and related areas.
