Laurel J. Brinton
I mean, from a diachronic
perspective
ABSTRACT:
This paper will examine
the historical development of I mean. A common pragmatic marker of high
frequency (Scheibman 2001), I mean in Modern English has been the subject
of fairly extensive study, It is generally seen as a device of self repair
or mistake editing (see, e.g., Crystal and Davy 1975; Goldberg 1980; Schourup
1985; Erman 1986, 1987; Schiffrin 1987; Stenström 1995). According
to Goldberg (1980: 215), it indicates a "change in emphasis, direction,
or meaning in order to align the conveyed information with the speaker’s
intended contribution". Schiffrin (1987) traces the functions of I mean
in Modern English to the verb’s two original meanings ‘to intend to convey
or indicate’ or ‘to have as an intention’: "the literal meaning of the
expression ‘I mean’ suggests that I mean marks a speaker’s upcoming modification
of the ideas or intentions of a prior utterance" (302). As such, it is
both metalinguistic and meta-communicative (303-304). However, no diachronic
study of this form been undertaken to date. This study will investigate
whether I mean follows the course of development suggested for the similar
"comment clause" I think (cf. Thompson and Mulac 1991), that is, whether
it originates in a full complement-taking verb which becomes progressively
fixed and ossified, ultimately changing its status from matrix clause to
parenthetical adjunct, this reanalysis being accompanied by various morphosyntactic
as well as semantic and pragmatic changes. One goal of such a micro-analysis
is to determine whether pragmatic markers such as I mean develop via a
process unique to historical pragmatics (such as pragmaticalization) or
via more general processes of diachronic change (such as grammaticalization
or lexicalization) (cf. Traugott 1995; Wischer 2000).
Selected References:
Crystal, David and
Derek Davy. 1975. Advanced conversational English. London:
Longman.
Erman, Britt. 1986.
"Some pragmatic expressions in English conversation". English in
speech and writing: a symposium, ed. by Gunnel Tottie and Ingegerd Bäcklund,
131-147. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell.
Erman, Britt. 1987.
Pragmatic expressions in English: a study of you know, you see,
and I mean in face-to-face conversation. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell.
Goldberg, Julia Anna.
1980. "Discourse particles: an analysis of the role of y’know, I
mean, well, and actually in conversation". Ph.D. diss. University of Cambridge.
Scheibman, Joanne.
2001. "Local patterns of subjectivity in person and verb type in
American English conversation". Frequency and the emergence of linguistic
structure,
ed. by Joan Bybee and Paul Hopper, 61-89. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Schiffrin, Deborah.
1987. Discourse markers. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Schourup, Lawrence
C. 1985. Common discourse particles in English conversation. New
York: Garland Press.
Stenström, Anna-Brita.
1995. "Some remarks on comment clauses". The verb in
contemporary English, ed. by Bas Aarts and Charles F. Meyer, 290-302. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP.
Traugott, Elizabeth
Closs. 1995. "The role of the development of discourse markers in a
theory of grammaticalization". Paper presented at the 12th International
Conference
on Historical Linguistics, Manchester, August 1995. Available at
http://www.stanford.edu/~traugott/ect-papersonline.html
Wischer, Olga. 2000.
"Grammaticalization versus lexicalization: ‘methinks’ there is
some confusion". Pathways of change: grammaticalization in English, ed.
by Olga
Fischer, Anette Rosenbach, and Dieter Stein, 355-370. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
This workshop is sponsored by the
Stanford Humanities Center, and funded by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.
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